


There's Magic in Your Touch

by witbey0ndmeasure



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Angst, Fluff, Gryffindor Liam, Hogwarts, Hogwarts AU, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Hufflepuff Harry, M/M, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Ravenclaw Louis, Slytherin Niall, Slytherin Zayn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-12 05:56:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12952800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witbey0ndmeasure/pseuds/witbey0ndmeasure
Summary: The boys are in their seventh and final year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, trying to enjoy what's left of their time together while the prospect of their future looms ever closer.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! so was going to hold off posting this until it was finished, but what the heck. This isn't super plot heavy, lot of little moments and day-to-day type stuff. I'll put warnings at the beginnings of chapters if there are any graphic violent parts, just so nobody is surprised. I really don't think there will be anything sexual, however, because everyone is like 17 in this fic and idk if I'm comfortable writing that as an adult person. maybe in an epilogue/timeskip type situation? if people really want that? idk, If there is, it'll probably be it's own chapter and I'll put warnings in the beginning so anyone could just skip it if they'd prefer. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh what else....... oh yeah! I'm trying to make this as accurate to the HP universe as I can, so if you catch any details that are wrong just let me know! Also if you know about lesser-known details that i don't, please enlighten me! Like if you know who the head of Gryffindor is or little details about spells or potions ingredients or anything. Thanks for reading! ((oh also harry and louis are not together in the beginning. they're just like that)) (one big wrong detail is that students apparently are allowed to become animagi, but I didn't learn that until I was 30k into the story, so i'm not going to go back and rewrite that whole sideplot. but I'm sure none of you are being that critical anyways) I really really hope you enjoy!

Louis shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his robes and muttered frustratedly to himself. It was bright and sunny outside, with cotton ball clouds casting small bits of shade here and there. The walk from the greenhouse back to the main castle was nothing but pleasant. A warm, late-summer breeze ruffled his hair, and he heard the ballad of a song bird drift by from somewhere in the distance. Louis, in his sulky state, could appreciate none of it. He heard footsteps quickly approaching.

“Come on, Lou,” his friend shouted from a little ways away. “it’s not my fault you’re bad with plants!”

Louis rolled his eyes but stopped anyways, allowing the other boy to catch up. When he did, they set off again at a more comfortable pace.

They were both quiet for a minute before he spoke up again. “It’s just herbology, you know. You don’t have to be good at everything.”

Louis sighed. “I know I don’t have to be good at _everything,_ Harry.” He grabbed at the knot of his blue and silver tie and loosened it around his neck. “I just see no reason why I should be so bad at herbology! Mine is the only plant that’s dying, did you notice?”

Harry nodded, with a sympathetic look on his face. “Yeah,” he said, “I noticed. But hey, Professor Longbottom gave me a key to the greenhouse so we could go back and try to water it again whenever. You know that you have to pour the water into the flower, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that sometimes they prefer their water with a little mint and lemon?”

“Yes, Harry,” Louis snapped, “I know that they like lemon water when they’re young, and that you have to start weaning them onto mashed bugs after three weeks, and that they need to be turned three degrees clockwise every six days so they don’t go lopsided-”

“-Everything I read said four degrees.”

Louis ignored him. “I’ve been reading about nothing but these stupid plants for weeks! I know everything about them, I just can’t get the bloody petals open so I can water it!”

Harry frowned. “You stroke the petals from base to tip, right? Both sides at the same time?”

Louis nodded. He’d tried every technique he could find to get those damn petals open. At one point he even resorted to reasoning with the thing, saying softly, _“You know you’re dying, right? But you’ll live if you let me give you this water. You want to live, don’t you? There’s so much of the world you haven’t seen.”_ At which point Harry cut in to remind him that the flower could not in fact hear or understand him.

“Well,” Harry’s voice drew him out of his thoughts. “I think I could get it to open its petals if you’d let me give it a go.”

“You know I’m not going to cheat.”

Harry knew that very well. He’d known that Louis refused to cheat since they met as first years. Harry had tried to rig a game of exploding snap in Louis’s favor, and he didn’t hear the end of it for months. He switched tactics.

“I’ll come with you, at least. Maybe I can figure out where you’re going wrong.”

Louis never felt any shame in needing help, and Harry had always been rather exceptional at herbology. So exceptional in fact that in his first year he was already meeting privately with Professor Longbottom to discuss their favorite types of magical cacti, and the best way to grow giant gourds. It was one of the many areas where Lou’s Hufflepuff friend’s intelligence rivaled (or straight out surpassed) his own. Louis felt that it made them somewhat of a dream-team, though. Harry’s knowledge filled the gaps in Louis’, and vice-versa. This, coupled with their mutual disregard for words like “forbidden” and “off limits” often made Louis feel invincible in Harry’s presence. On the off chance that they did find themselves in a tight spot, they had each other’s backs unconditionally.

“You have a free period now, don’t you?” Harry asked, stopping on the spot and grabbing Louis’s elbow. “Let’s go to the lake, yeah? I bet I can get the giant squid to let us pet it. I think I’ve finally found out what it eats!”

Louis finally succumbed to Harry’s infectious enthusiasm, changing course and cutting across the grounds towards the sparkling surface of the lake. Harry had been trying desperately to befriend the giant squid since his first year, and even the ghosts recon they haven’t seen it warm up to anyone as much as Harry. Along with his natural green thumb, Harry was also unusually good at connecting with magical creatures, be it the giant squid, thestrals, house elves, or even the centaurs.

Louis remembered the first time he met the centaurs, back when they were only in their third year.

_He and Harry had been wandering around in the forbidden forest for an hour or so. While it was still twilight outside, very little light permeated through the canopy to the forest floor. Harry held his wand loosely at his side, pointed towards the ground. Every few meters he would change his grip slightly, and a delicate trail of toadstools would burst from the soil where he pointed. He’d even learned how to make the mushrooms glow a faint green, so they wouldn’t lose their way after dark._

_Louis thought they were brilliant, especially for magic done by a 13-year-old. They were also very hard to find, unless you knew what you were looking for._

_All at once, Louis felt like his heart might’ve come to a stop as he heard the faint pounding of hooves in the soft forest dirt, unmistakably coming closer._

_Louis tugged on the sleeve of Harry’s robe. “Harry, we need to go.” He said, “Those could be centaurs. I’ve read about centaurs, Harry, they don’t sound friendly. I’m serious, we need to_ **go** _.” He grabbed Harry’s hand, trying to pull him away._

_“We can’t outrun centaurs, Louis. We’ll be ok, promise.” Harry said, staying rooted to the spot. The hoofbeats were coming from every direction; they were surrounded. Louis was practically trembling. He should’ve never let Harry convince him that going in the forest so late in the evening was a good idea. Now he was probably going to die here, and at his funeral they would all sigh and lament on how he should’ve just_ followed _the_ rules _._

_The thundering sound of many hooves grew to a crescendo before stopping suddenly._

_Out of the darkness emerged a tall, burly, broad shouldered figure, with the body of a jet-black horse._

_“Lower your weapons,” his voice was dark and smooth. Louis panicked for a second, making sure his wand was sheathed securely in his robes before the rustling of many bows and arrows told him that their wands were not the weapons in question. Louis gulped. “they’re only children.”_

_Another centaur with a brown and white dappled body came forward into the light. Louis guessed there must’ve been at least 30 more staying hidden in the deep shadows._

_“_ Human _children?” the centaur’s face looked like he had just caught a whiff of something unsavory. “Who are you and what are you doing alone in the forest?”_

_Harry bowed his head slightly before looking back up at the centaur with his wide, innocent eyes. “My name’s Harry, and this is my friend Louis. We’re students at Hogwarts. We wanted to get some fresh air, and it’s such a beautiful night. I was just following Venus,” He said, pointing vaguely to a bright spot in the night sky, shining through a gap in the trees. “Venus has been really bright lately. And that’s how we ended up…uh…here.” Harry’s gaze swept the woods around them. He squinted a bit, as if trying to see past the veil of darkness._

_The black-haired centaur (they later learned his name was Nazon) raised an eyebrow. “Venus certainly has been bright.” The expression on his face was unreadable. “However, if you have no business in the forest, we must ask you to leave. There are dangers here that you young humans could not imagine. Can you find your way back?”_

_Harry nodded quickly. “First, though, I have a question.”_

_Louis clenched his jaw. He wanted nothing more than to be far, far away from these creatures with their bone crushing hooves and projectile weapons._

_The centaurs looked a little taken aback to be receiving questions from a couple of children, but Harry continued as if he didn’t notice. “What would we come to if we were to keep going this direction?” he gestured in the direction they had been heading, the direction Venus had been leading them. “We’ve always had to turn back before making it too far in, but the curiosity’s eating at me.”_

_Nazon stared down his nose at Harry for a moment, seemingly unsure whether or not he should answer. He shared a look with the other creature next to him before responding._

_“If you were to continue in the direction you were heading, you would undoubtedly find yourself face to face with an entire family of acramantuli. I assure you, they would not allow you to walk away unharmed as we are doing. Now go, before you meet a creature that you can not handle.”_

_Louis felt like he was finally able to breathe again as they turned around and took the quickest path out of the woods._

Louis had been so lost in his thoughts of his friend that he didn’t notice the small group of boys approaching until it was too late.

He let out a small yelp as his feet were quite literally pulled out from under him, sending him face first into the wet earth at the edge of the lake.

“ _Mudblood!”_ someone sneered. Before he even had a chance to react he heard the dull thud of another body falling to the ground some ways away. He looked up to see three boys running towards the castle, while a fourth (the offender, presumably,) lie stiff as a board in the dirt. Harry was frowning deeply, wand raised towards the boy lying in the dirt.

He turned around and extended a hand towards Louis, who took it gratefully and pulled himself up to his feet. “Did you even use a spell?” he asked, thinking he may have just missed it in the commotion.

Harry frowned, thinking. “I think so? It worked, either way.”

However, Harry was apparently not finished.

“ _Mobilicorpus.”_ He said softly, with a tone that would’ve chilled Louis to the bone had it been used on him. The petrified body rose from the ground and floated lazily towards them. It came to a halt only an arm’s reach from Harry.

“Fairbanks, when will you ever grow the fuck up?” Harry sighed.

Thomas Fairbanks had been tormenting Louis since his third year, when it came out that all of his family before him were muggles.

His eyes, the only part of him that wasn’t frozen, grew wide with fear as Harry pointed his wand directly at his forehead. Harry wasn’t one for physical violence unless it was absolutely necessary, but it was always nerve wracking to have an angry wizard pointing a wand at your forehead.

A strangled whine escaped from Thomas’s throat as Harry’s wand came into contact with his skin. Harry slowly traced the word “BIGOT” into his forehead, angry red blemishes erupting behind the point of his wand.

Harry stepped back then, admiring his work.

“Well then, let’s get you into the great hall, shall we?” he said, giving Thomas a clap on the back that sent him gliding out over the lake. “No no, not that way.” Harry guided him back to the shore with his wand. He prodded him in the back a few times until Fairbanks drifted ahead of them at a brisk walking pace.

Louis wasn’t sure if Harry had a plan in place for when they arrived at the castle, but it soon became apparent that they weren’t going to make it that far.

“McGonagall,” Louis hissed at Harry as he saw a witch with white-grey hair and lips pressed into a thin line striding towards them. Harry was not paying attention. “McGonagall, Harry, _McGonagall!”_

Harry finally heard his friend’s warning. With a swift wave of his wand Thomas’s body, which Thomas himself now had full control over, fell heavily to the ground. He quickly scrambled back to his feet and sprinted off in a different direction. Louis and Harry stayed where they were, doing their best to look innocent while fully knowing that the headmistress had seen everything.

She eyed both boys for a moment without saying anything before sighing, composure relaxing.

“Someday I do hope I can have a nice walk through the grounds without finding you two causing trouble.” She shook her head, but Louis could’ve sworn he saw something fond in her eyes. “I trust, by now, you both know where this is going? My office. With haste, if you will.”

*

Louis, Harry, and Professor McGonagall stood in front of the gargoyle guarding the entrance to the headmistress’ office. She stared pointedly at Louis for a few seconds before sighing and glancing towards the ceiling.

“ _Ova aranea,”_ she said quietly.

The gargoyle sprung to life, stepping out of their way.

“Spider eggs?” Louis asked, “What happened to chocolate frog?” her odd body language suddenly clicked in his head “Did you change the password specifically to keep me out of your office?!”

“Mr. Tomlinson, you understand that most students never know the password to my office, correct? Sometimes I prefer not to have children showing up at my door unannounced.”

“I always knock first.” Louis said indignantly. Harry was constantly surprised at the comfortable way that Louis spoke to the headmistress. He was almost sure he would be scolded if he addressed her so casually, but with Louis she simply shook her head and sighed.

Arriving at the top of the staircase, she opened the double doors to her office and conjured up two cushioned chairs in front of her desk. Louis stopped to stroke the cheek of the fluffy grey cat with eyes the color of pumpkins who was perched on the corner of the desk. He only paused a moment, though, before sitting himself down in a position that had become all too familiar to him over the years. Harry sat stiffly and quietly next to him. He’d sat across from Professor McGonagall almost as many times as Louis had, but for him the anxiety never quite wore off.

She addressed Louis first.

“Louis,” she spoke to him without formalities, “we have been back in school for two weeks now. Two _weeks,_ and you’ve been in my office three times.”

Louis clenched his jaw but maintained eye contact.

She continued, “Perhaps I shouldn’t even be telling you this, but you’re arguably the most gifted student in this entire school. Why, we haven’t seen grades like yours since, well since Hermione Granger, quite frankly.”

Louis’ cheeks turned pink under her praise. His eyes twinkled, but other than that his facial composure did not slip.

“Do you have any idea how close you were to being made a prefect? Head boy? But I was forced to award both titles to my second choice because of your, how should I say, _absolute_ disregard for every one of the school rules!”

“Professor,” Louis leaned back and allowed the cat to take up residence in his lap, “if I may defend myself, I never wanted to be a prefect, and I surely did _not_ want to be head boy. I come to school, I get good grades, and I have fun with my friends while I’m at it. That’s what I want to get from my time at Hogwarts, and-”

“Louis-”

“And furthermore,” Louis continued, stroking the purring ball of fur in his lap, “I think we’ve gotten a bit off topic, seeing as what happened today was _absolutely_ not my fault! If anything, it should be Harry and Fairbanks sitting here getting a talking to, not me!”

He turned to Harry as soon as he realized what he said, apologizing for throwing him under the bus.

“No, no you’re right.” Harry said. “Professor McGonagall, er… ma’am, if I may, Louis honestly was the innocent victim in all this. Fairbanks came up from behind and knocked him over into the mud, with magic no less, and then he…he called him a…” Harry sighed, “he called Louis a mudblood. And Louis didn’t retaliate at all. That was all me.”

Nobody spoke for a moment as McGonagall looked back and forth between the two boys, making Harry visibly uncomfortable.

“Well, Mr. Styles, you sure do have the loyalty of a Hufflepuff, don’t you?” Harry blushed. “That being said, it is still strictly forbidden to use magic on other students. I trust you both know the definition of the word ‘forbidden’?” They nodded. “Right, well, as honorable as your actions may have been, Styles, I will still be taking ten points from Hufflepuff. However,” she waved her wand and a tray full of sweets appeared on the desk in front of them, “do help yourselves.”

*

It was very late at night, and the air was turning a bit cold where Louis and Harry stood atop the astronomy tower. Louis had been unofficially tutoring Harry in Astronomy for as long as they’d known each other (along with a few other classes, depending on what they were taking at the time). He had always been happy to do it, and in return Harry helped him with Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.

Harry leaned away from his telescope eyepiece and groaned dramatically.

“Space is cool and all, but astronomy just doesn’t click in my head.” He sat back against the stone wall, his side pressed into Louis’s. They both instantly appreciated the added body heat.

He continued, “I think maybe it’s because it’s so far away. I know it sounds silly, but everything we learn feels sort of fake to me, you know?”

“I totally get that.” Louis said, leaning a bit more of his weight onto his friend. “Space is so weird, too. Did you know it probably rains diamonds on Saturn? Or that Venus rotates backwards, and nobody really knows why?”

Harry frowned at him. “How do you know that?” he asked.

Louis pulled his knees up to his chest. “That’s muggle science for ya.”

As much as he loved everything about magic, Louis also tried very hard to keep himself updated on muggle science and technology. Whenever she could find them, his mom would send him articles from newspapers and journals detailing new advances in DNA coding, space exploration, or anything else she thought he would find interesting. He had a folder full to bursting with them back in his room.

Harry turned his gaze up to the twinkling night sky, looking thoughtful.

“How does muggle science figure that out?”

Louis thought for a second, trying to pull the information from the article he’d read back into the front of his mind.

“I don’t remember exactly. Fancy electronic telescopes that can detect a planet’s elemental signature, maybe?”

Harry raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“You know that muggles have put humans on the moon, right? And robots on Mars?”

Harry now turned his full attention to Louis, looking downright shocked.

“It’s true,” Louis chuckled, “Muggles have sent quite a lot of stuff into space. They’ve taken really nice pictures of most of the planets in our solar system, too.”

Harry let his head fall back against the stone with a thud that almost sounded painful. He gazed again into space, frown lines creasing deeply across his forehead.

“So, you’re telling me that right now there is a colony of muggles living on the moon?” he asked, “That doesn’t sound right.”

Louis sorted, nudging his shoulder into Harry.

“That’s not at all what I’m telling you,” he said, “they sent people to the moon, and then brought those people back to Earth.”

“Who sent them up there?”

“The United States.”

“How did they do that without magic?”

Louis had thought almost the same thing when he was younger.

“Science, Harry. Science, and rockets.” He said.

“Wow.” Harry whispered, falling silent for a minute.

“And _robots_ on _Mars?_ Who did that?”

“Also the United States. Their names are Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity.”

“That’s _amazing.”_ Harry said, wistfully. “And all without magic, too. Muggles do not get enough credit.”

Louis breathed the cool night air deep into his lungs. Sitting out here with Harry, staring back at the stars that had forged the very molecules in his body, Louis felt extremely peaceful. His chest felt light, like his lungs had possibly been replaced with a helium balloon, or maybe like he’d just downed a particularly good pepper-up potion. That was simply the effect Harry had on him. Sometimes Louis suspected that Harry might have a little Veela in him, somewhere down the line.

Harry was, however, about as pureblood as one could be nowadays. That’s not to say he was necessarily raised by death eaters, but his family did (and does) openly avoid socializing with muggles. It had made Louis a bit nervous the first time he’d visited Harry’s house, but Anne had politely asked him how his mother and sisters were doing, and his family hadn’t come up again.

 Because of his magical upbringing, coupled with the fact that his family had kept him as far from any part of the muggle world as physically possible, Harry was always fascinated by the things Louis had to tell him. Louis taught him about robots, weather balloons, phones, and radiators. The internet had by far perplexed him the most, though. Louis had tried for years to explain that one, but Harry could never quite grasp it.

“Someday I’ll have to visit you when you’re with your family. Then you can show me these pictures, and the internet, or wherever you get this stuff from.” Harry tilted his head so his cheek rested on Louis’s hair.

“You’re always welcome.” Louis said, “Maybe we could go to a museum, I bet you’d like that. Do you think you could convincingly act like a muggle?”

“Here, listen to this,” Harry balled his hands into his hair and filled his voice with fake stress, “ _Oh no, the government’s at it again! Taxes are through the roof! Wall Street went down thirty pounds!”_

They both dissolved into a fit of laughter. Harry wrapped his arms around Louis, who’d turned to press his face into Harry’s sweater, hiding his grin.

A chilled breeze drifted gently around them, picking up thin wisps of their hair, but Harry and Louis both felt warm to their very cores.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lol this chapter is a real downer whoops. Also, if the beginnings/endings of the chapter seem sort of weird, that's probably because i'm not actually writing this in a chaptered form? like the way I have it saved on my computer it's just one singular document, which is really how I would prefer it was read, but so far it's 13000+ words and just getting started, so I don't think anyone would want to read it without it being somewhat broken up. oh well

Harry was seated at the end of the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall with his friend Liam. He held a peculiar looking wand delicately in his hands, rotating it slowly and examining it closely.

“You never get tired of looking at that thing, do you?” Liam asked.

“It’s just so _cool._ ” Harry said, as he’d said hundreds of times before. “I’ve never seen anything like it. A _stone wand!_ It’s beautiful.”

Liam chuckled. “It’s frustrating, that’s what it is. That wand drives me mad. I’ve been reading about wand making for five years, and for the life of me I still can’t understand how a stone wand could work. I’ve got half a mind to travel to Ireland just to question the man who made it.”

“I didn’t even know there was a wand shop in Ireland, if I’m being honest.” Harry had picked up his own wand and was comparing them side by side. His was quite beautiful; English Oak and dragon heartstring, 10 ¾”, slightly springy. With leaves and vines delicately carved around the handle to give it some texture, the craftsmanship and artistry were superb. However, it was nowhere near as unique as a _stone_ wand.

The wand was perfectly smooth and always cool to the touch. It was only about a centimeter wide at the base, and it tapered to a rounded point at the end. It was made of the same type of rock as some parts of Stonehenge; bluestone, if Harry remembered correctly, from a specific mountain range. The stone was black with a sprinkling of small white spots, which always reminded Harry of a clear night’s sky, full of stars. There was no visible texture at the base, so one might think it would be hard to hold on to, but when Harry grabbed the wand he swore it felt like it was somehow grabbing him back.

It was just so _cool._

“There’s been a wand shop in Waterford for about 1000 years.” Liam said. Harry had almost forgotten what they were talking about. “Not quite as old as Olivanders, but very well respected.”

“Do you remember what Niall said the core is made of?”

A blond boy in Slytherin robes plopped himself down at the table directly across from Harry.

“Goldstone.” He said.

“Where’d you go off to?” Liam asked.

“Well, I found out this mornin’ that Hartford’s failing Alchemy and has to drop off the quidditch team, so I had to go talk to him m’self to see if it was true, which it is.” He began shoveling large amounts of eggs and sausage onto his plate. “And get this, he’s more upset that he had to quit _frog choir._ Can you believe it? This is the first year he’s ever made it on the team, and he’s upset about frog choir.” He shook his head, looking disgusted and muttering ‘ _frog choir’_ a few more times under his breath.

“Do you need some cheering up, then?” Harry asked, “Here, I’ve got a surprise for you.” He gave the strange wand a little twist and flick in Niall’s direction.

Niall frowned at him for a moment before he started coughing. It started out light, but quickly turned into deep, stomach clenching retches. He covered his mouth and turned away from the table, making so much noise that he drew attention from all over the great hall. He looked for a moment like he was about to throw up, but instead he stuck his thumb and first finger into his mouth, pulling a spit covered but otherwise pristine daisy from his throat, stem still attached.

He looked incredulously at Harry. “What the fuck, mate?”

Harry grinned widely and dried off the flower with another flick of Niall’s wand. He took it from his friend and stood up, leaning across the table to tuck it behind his ear. Niall rolled his eyes, but the smile playing at the corners of his mouth gave his true feelings away. He raised a hand like he was going to remove it, but instead he tucked the flower more securely into place.

“There would’ve been a lot less coughing if I’d used my own wand.” Harry said, still smiling.

Niall snorted. “Well in that case thank you _very_ much for using mine.” He leaned forward and snatched his wand back out of Harry’s hands.

Only a moment later the last two members of their friend group arrived at the table.

“Nice flower,” Zayn said, raising his eyebrows at Niall. Zayn and Niall were the only two of their group that were in the same house, and they were close friends before either had met Harry Louis or Liam.  Zayn had come along as part of a package deal when they befriended Niall second year, but they all loved him dearly. “and Harry, come on, you’ve got dirt on your cheek. What are we, cave people?” he adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose, as if that somehow added to his point.

“I was in the greenhouse this morning.” Harry said. Louis and Zayn’s heads snapped up, and they suddenly had their full attention focused on him.

“And?” Louis prompted.

“And I am very proud to announce that not only has my mandrake finally reached maturity, but it also has _plenty_ of healthy leaves, so I can clip three off without hurting it whatsoever.”

“That’s perfect!” Louis looked excitedly between Harry and Zayn. “The next full moon is in, what, a fortnight? So we’ve got-”

“Hold on,” Liam leaned forwards, sticking an arm in front of Louis to cut him off. “Mandrake leaves and a full moon? There’s got to be something I don’t know about that starts off like that, because there’s no way you lot would be _that_ stupid.”

Louis knit his eyebrows together in feigned confusion. “Well, you’ll have to be a bit more specific Liam. What is it that you think we’re doing?”

Liam glanced around to make sure there were no teachers or nosy students within earshot.

He lowered his voice to a whisper “I _think_ that you’re going to try and become animagi.” He hissed.

“Oh,” Louis said, “well, yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

Liam closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips into his temples.

“No, no way.” He said, “You three have done some pretty reckless stuff in the past, but this is a whole new level of idiocy.” He looked pointedly between Harry Louis and Niall.

Niall threw his hands up, palms out.

“Hey, don’t look at me, I have nothing to do with this.” He said, through a mouthful of toast. “My patronus is a stoat. ’m not gonna risk mutilating myself so I can turn into a fuckin’ weasel whenever I want.”

Liam threw his hands into the air. “Even _Niall_ thinks this is a bad idea! Niall who thinks it’s fun to play chicken with the whomping willow!” Liam paused, eyes narrowing slightly. “But, wait a second, Harry specifically said _three_ leaves…” the other four watched as his expression morphed into one of pure horror. “ _Zayn?!”_

“Look, I can explain.” Zayn said, but Liam wasn’t listening.

“No way, come on Zayn, you- you can’t _do_ this to me! I can _not_ be the only one in this friend group that makes use of common sense! Do you- do you have any idea how much responsibility that is?!”

Zayn placed his tattooed hands gently over Liam’s and spoke to him calmly.

“Listen, Liam. You know how these two are.” He jerked his head towards Louis and Harry. “If I hadn’t agreed to make the potion they would’ve done it themselves anyways. Now, who do you trust more to make a dangerous, advanced potion? Me, or these idiots?”

Liam sighed again, eyes falling closed. “You.” He said.

“You’re damn right, because I’m easily the best potion maker in this whole school.”

Liam opened his eyes just so he could roll them at Zayn.

Zayn continued. “Plus, I mean, my patronus is a _wolf._ How _wicked_ would that be?”

Liam dropped his head to the table with a heavy _thump_ and a groan.

*

Harry didn’t show up to dinner that evening, but Louis didn’t think too much of it. Harry would often get so caught up in a conversation with Hagrid or Professor Longbottom that they’d talk straight through a mealtime. It wasn’t a problem for Harry, because the house elves were always more than happy to make him his own dinner if he stopped by the kitchens. They’d even take requests.

Niall had convinced Louis to come to dueling club after they finished eating, instead of going to find out what Harry’d gotten up to. Louis didn’t participate, but it was always fun to watch Niall when he was really in his element. He had lightning quick reactions and his magic was always sharp and effective. He switched up his style often so nobody would know what to expect. Sometimes he would rely more heavily on hexes, sometimes on offensive spells, and sometimes he would rely fully on defensive magic until his opponent left him an opening, at which point he would strike, disarming his rival before they even knew what hit them.

He was quite the formidable opponent. Louis certainly wouldn’t want to be up against him in a real fight.

Louis watched Niall take down five students in a row, each one hardly able to land a single spell on him, before the sixth took him down with a particularly powerful and well-placed cheering charm that left Niall curled on his side in a vicious fit of laughter. He dropped his wand to the ground and held his hands up in surrender with tears streaming down his face. Louis helped him back to his feet, but he couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the night. Louis didn’t mind in the slightest, as Niall’s laugh was full bodied and infectious.

Niall was still occasionally dissolving into giggles by the time he and Louis parted ways, Niall heading to the dungeons and Louis to Ravenclaw tower.

Upon arriving at the entrance to tower, Louis scratched at the back of his head, taking a minute to consider the riddle he was given.

“Could you give it to me again?” he asked the eagle knocker.

“ _Dare trespass my threshold? Don’t dream you shall flee;_  
The strongest, the swiftest, cannot evade me.  
I’ll seize you and crush you and wrench you apart,  
Though no one may gaze on my singular heart.”

Louis worried his bottom lip between his teeth.

“Well, let’s look at this literally,” he thought aloud, “ _the swiftest cannot evade me_ , so what’s the swiftest? Well, the _actual_ fastest thing is light, so if light can’t get away- yeah, yeah I think that fits everything, _no one may gaze on my singular heart,_ it’s a black hole.”

The door silently swung open.

“Next time maybe you could give me a _hard_ one? I don’t know, just a thought.”

The door creaked loudly as it closed, apparently annoyed with Louis’s attitude.

It was getting fairly late, so the spacious room was mostly empty. Louis, however, was not even beginning to feel tired.

He ascended the stairs into the 7th year boys’ dormitory and quietly grabbed a small cauldron, a book, and a wooden box full of various potions ingredients. He’d been wanting to work on some healing potions for a while now, but was never able to find the time.

Louis loved healing magic, and he was quite good at it for being self-taught. He thought it was a right shame that a school as good as Hogwarts wouldn’t have classes on healing. How would St. Mungo’s stay well-staffed if children weren’t ever exposed to that type of magic?

Louis, however, had bought almost every book Flourish and Blotts sold that dealt with healing. He had books that were broader and overarching on things like healing spells and charms, medicinal potions, reversing magic-induced injuries, energy work, and things of that nature, but he also had entire books dedicated to curing specific infections, fixing broken arms, and healing bites from venomous creatures. Thanks to Harry, that last one came in handy a lot. Thanks to Niall, everything else came in handy a lot.

Louis sure did get a lot of practice. Liam wasn’t exaggerating when he said Niall thought it was fun to aggravate the Whomping Willow.

Louis arrived back in the common room to see that the only other remaining student had since retired to her dormitory, meaning he had the whole place to himself.

He set his things down on the floor and started by building up the fire in the fireplace. He wasn’t going to use it to brew his potion, as that would’ve made it terribly difficult to get a precise temperature, but he wanted the ambiance. He then sat himself on the floor under a large lamp (the only one in the room) and began organizing his things in front of him.

The lamp was, in fact, a bit of an achievement of his. Three times in his first two years at Hogwarts he’d gone to the headmistress’s office, trying to make her see the benefits of electric light over candles, and three times she’d shot him down. It was early in his third year, when he was once again completely fed up with straining his eyes to attempt to do homework by candlelight, that he decided to have just one more go at it.

_Professor McGonagall was less than thrilled to see Louis in her office first thing on a Monday morning._

_In his defense, he had knocked, and she had told him to come in._

_“Mr. Tomlinson, you were the last person to come into my office Friday evening. What in the world could you possibly need already?”_

_Louis bent down to pet the cat that was rubbing against his shins. The cat pushed his cheek further into Louis’s hand, purring and blinking up at him with wide, orange eyes._

_“Reul is happy to see me,” he said._

_“Mr. Tomlinson, believe it or not I am quite a busy woman. What do you_ want? _”_

_Louis stood up, much to the croaked protests of the headmistress’s cat._

_“I want to try one more time to convince you that there’s no need for us to be living with the technology of the middle ages, if that’s alright.”_

_She pinched the bridge of her nose and mumbled something that Louis couldn’t make out. Maybe that was for the best._

_“You have three minutes.”_

_That was okay. He could talk fast._

_“Professor McGonagall, honestly, if any muggle somehow got into this castle, they would be shocked that it’s being used as a school when all of our stuff is from the 18 th century! They would laugh in our faces when they saw that we have the power to do _actual _magic and yet I’m giving myself headaches every night trying to read handwritten books that are two hundred years old by candlelight!”_

_Professor McGonagall shook her head. “Louis, not the lamps again?”_

_“Yes, the lamps.” He was starting to get more animated, gesturing a lot as he was speaking. “There isn’t one good reason why we shouldn’t have lamps! It’s 2009! The first electric light was invented in 1802! I’m sure you can do the math yourself, but just so we’re clear, that’s two hundred and seven years that muggles have had this great technology, and two hundred and seven years that Hogwarts has ignored it.”_

_“Do you suggest I call an electrician, Mr. Tomlinson?” she said with raised eyebrows._

_Louis ran a hand through his hair. “Why is everyone making this so much harder than it has to be? I can make a ball of light come out of my wand and just throw it across the room and it’ll shine wherever it lands until I put it out. It’s not even hard! But you’re telling me that you would need an electrician to make a lightbulb work? That doesn’t make any sense! I’m not saying that I want you to put iridescent lights in the great hall or anything, I just want to be able to do my homework in my common room after dark without having to use my wand as a flashlight! Lamps are brighter, steadier and much less of a fire hazard than me having five candles on my desk just so I can write essays in even lighting!”_

_For a few seconds they both just stared at each other._

_“Are you finished, then?” she asked._

_“Was that three minutes?”_

_She ignored him. “Louis,” she said, “if you write a formal request of satisfactory quality outlining what you want and why you think it’s important to your schooling, I’ll… I’ll see that it gets processed.”_

_Louis paused for a moment, not wanting to get excited prematurely._

_“So, does that mean I can have a lamp?”_

_“You heard what I said. Now, out of my office.”_

Hardly a day goes by that he isn’t grateful for that lamp. It was large and brass and had a neck that bent so it could be used by someone sitting at a desk or on the floor. After the first one appeared in Ravenclaw tower, other students began to appreciate the convenience and a few more had popped up around the school each year. Every time he saw a student using one, it felt like a small victory.

Louis lit the lamp with a flick of his wand, illuminating the workspace he’d set up. He would’ve preferred to do potion work standing, but none of the desks in the common room were the right height, or large enough for that matter. So, on the floor he sat.

 He put a clever little charm on the floor under his cauldron to prevent it from getting any burns or scorch marks. He didn’t really think that McGonagall would approve of him brewing potions on the common room floor, but that was only a problem if he got caught. With a mumbled ‘ _aguamenti’_ he filled the cauldron half way with water, added in a small bit of honey, and produced a dainty ring of blue flames beneath it. With that all set up, he began cutting up a bit of wiggentree bark on the lid of his box, which double as his cutting board. He was making a potion that he’d come up with himself in his fifth year to quickly heal bruises. The most effective batch he’d made so far was able to completely get rid of pretty nasty bruises in about two days, but he wanted to get the time down even more. Zayn had advised him to cut the bark more finely, and to try cutting the beetles’ eyes in half instead of crushing them, so that’s what he was attempting tonight.

If everything worked out, he would have enough of the potion to keep Niall fully stocked for the whole quidditch season.

Though he usually made this potion for Niall now, he’d started out making it for himself. He’d been bullied a lot as a child and he absolutely hated having visible bruises. Everyone would ask about them and talk to him with pity. Getting beat up was bad enough without having it advertised all over your face. Plus, sometimes he’d really felt like they just opened the door for more bullying. So, after showing up on the first day of class one year with a gnarly yellowing bruise on his jaw, he’d finally decided enough was enough. After a few failed attempts, his potion was able to heal a bruise twice as fast as it would naturally. It was the first bit of healing magic he’d come up with by himself, and even now he refused to share the recipe with anyone but Zayn.

If he was being honest, Louis didn’t think he would be nearly as interested in healing if his childhood had been different. But hey, everyone had a few childhood traumas that translated into weird adult quirks, right? Louis suspected that had something to do with Zayn’s fear of water and Liam’s unhealthy admiration for authority figures. He also thought that might have something to do with the way Harry’d always been absolutely excellent with fighting magic. He would’ve been a formidable opponent for even Niall, but he refused to test that idea whenever it came up.

“I don’t think fighting is fun.” Is what he’d always say.

Since Louis had known him, Harry had also had a few anxiety attacks that made Louis quite suspicious. He’d never asked about it, though. Most people didn’t enjoy discussing their emotional wounds. He’d been tempted to ask the very first time he had ever witnessed one of these episodes, but Harry had been in no state to state to delve into his baggage at the time.

That was in the spring of their fourth year.

_For the first time in many months, Louis and Harry were trekking through the forbidden forest. Harry had been itching to get out of the castle, and Louis never let him go by himself. It was an absolutely beautiful day to break some school rules, anyways._

_Despite the pristine weather, and the sound of birds happily singing overhead, Harry and Louis had been arguing for the majority of the time they’d been in the forest._

_“Honestly Lou, how on Earth could you think the Tornadoes deserved to win last year’s world cup? The refs had been making bad calls left and right for the entire season! They should’ve never made it that far in the first place!”_

_“Oh come off it, you’re just saying that because you’re still bitter that Yorkshire didn’t win!”_

_“Still bitter? I am absolutely not still bitter!” Harry’s voice oozed with frustration. This argument had been going on for almost 20 minutes now, and Harry took professional quidditch very seriously. “You know what, why am I even arguing with you about this? You’re a just_ muggle born _,” he sneered, “what do you know?”_

_The way in which he’d said the words “muggle born” hit Louis like a brick wall. He stopped dead in his tracks._

_“Oh my god, Lou, I’m so- I didn’t- I didn’t mean-”_

_“Is that how it is, then? Well, if you’re going to say ‘muggle born’ as if it’s a dirty word, then you might as well just call me a mudblood, don’t you think? It’d get your point across much more effectively!” Louis spat, “Go on, say it then! Say that you obviously know better than me because you’re a pureblood and I’m just a mudblood!”_

_Harry’s face had gone pale. He was shaking his head, and his breaths were coming quick and short. Louis, however, was much too angry to notice. After all, Harry was his best friend! How could he say something like that after all the times he’d seen that word thrown at Louis, often accompanied by a swift punch in the gut? ‘Just a muggle born’, pah! As if Harry would’ve made it through a single year of his exams without Louis’ help!_

_Harry’s strangled voice broke through Louis’ thoughts._

_“Please Louis, I didn’t- you know I would never-”_

_“I_ thought _you would never! But what do I know, I’m ‘just a muggle born,’ right?”_

_Tears had started to spill down Harry’s cheeks._

_“Louis, please-”_

_“No.” Louis cut him off. He was positively fuming. “No, you know what, you can piss right the fuck off, Styles. Of all people, I never expected- well, it doesn’t much matter now does it? Good luck passing your arithmancy exam without your mudblood tutor!”_

_With that, Louis turned heel and stormed off, heading towards the forest’s edge._

_He walked for a few minutes, muttering to himself darkly. Who did Harry think he was, anyways?_

_Louis had put a good amount of distance between the two of them before he began feeling oddly naked and stopped to take inventory of himself. What had he come into the forest with? He had his wand, which was always good, he had a few vials of a general antivenom in his pocket, just in case, he had-_

_He didn’t have his book bag._

_Of course he didn’t, because Harry had been carrying it for him._

_Louis cursed himself loudly for being so thoughtless in his anger. Under different circumstances he may not have even considered going back for it, but he had a mostly-finished essay on Ptolemy in there, and he really didn’t fancy the idea of rewriting it. The assignment called for a roll of parchment a meter long, and he already had it three fourths of the way filled in. It wasn’t due for another two days, so he supposed in theory he could rewrite it, but he would never be able to remember all the good points he’d put in the original. Plus, that essay wasn’t the only thing in his bag. He had spell books, a small jar of dragon’s claw ooze, a few newt spleens, his star charts-_

_But, no, he couldn’t just go waltzing back up to Harry, could he? Not after what had just happened._

_However, he really wanted to try out a potion with those newt spleens tonight._

_So, fine. He would go and find Harry, get his bag back, and then officially storm off. It wasn’t the most dignified sounding plan he’d ever come up with, but he wasn’t about to take a bad grade on an essay just because he was too proud to go and get his things back._

_He turned around and set off quickly in the direction he’d come from, hoping Harry hadn’t moved too far._

_Harry hadn’t, in fact, moved at all. Louis found him in the exact spot he’d been standing before, only now he was sitting in the dirt._

_Harry’s composure surprised Louis, and he stopped for a moment to observe. He’d never seen harry like this before. He was sitting cross legged on the ground, elbows balanced on his knees, and hands fisted tightly in his hair. He was shaking his head from side to side, and the jerky way his shoulders shook suggested he was having a hard time breathing evenly._

_Louis moved forwards slowly, not wanting to startle him. As he got closer, he realized Harry seemed to be chanting something._

_“Not you…not you…not you…’s not you…”_

_Louis knelt in front of him and placed a hand on his shoulder._

_Harry, who must’ve had his eyes closed, jumped back like he’d been shocked. When he realized that it was Louis, his red-rimmed eyes went wide._

_“Lou,” he whispered._

_His cheeks were pink and wet._

_He reached towards Louis but stopped halfway there, suddenly unsure. All thoughts of being angry with Harry suddenly vanished from Louis’s mind. He moved his hand up to cup the side of Harry’s face, wiping at the tear streaks with the pad of his thumb. Emboldened by the touch, Harry wrapped one large hand around the side of Louis’s neck, his thumb resting in front of his ear. His other hand gripped tightly onto the collar of Louis’s shirt._

_“Lou,” he whispered, shoulders still shaking, “’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean- thought you’d left, I didn’t… ‘m so sorry.”_

_Louis leaned forwards until their foreheads touched and slowly stroked Harry’s cheek._

_“Slow down, love,” he said softly, “it’s okay, I know you didn’t mean it.”_

_Harry shook his head as another sob slipped past his lips. “Not okay- so not okay. ‘s not me.”_

_Louis could feel Harry’s pulse under his hand, and it was positively racing. Louis figured it was probably because he seemed to be hyperventilating. Louis worried that if he didn’t calm Harry down quick, he might pass out._

_“No, it wasn’t okay, but I know you’re sorry and I accept your apology. And_  I’m _sorry that I yelled so much.” He could feel Harry’s breath, hot against his chin. “I forgive you, okay?”_

_“You shouldn’t be sorry.” Harry whispered._

_“But I am, and I’m allowed to be.”_

_Harry pulled back a bit to look at him, evidently judging if he was being sincere. When he found no trace of anger left in Louis’s face, he nodded quickly and tilted his head back, though it seemed to do nothing to stop the tears._

_“God, I can’t- I can’t- can’t breathe.”_

_“Here, let me try something,” Louis said. He grabbed Harry’s hands and placed them on either side of his ribcage. “Can you feel me breathing?”_

_Harry nodded._

_“Good, just focus on that, okay? In…and out…” Louis placed both of his hands, left under right, in the middle of Harry’s chest. He began moving them in slow circles, counterclockwise. He breathed deeply, and softly uttered a chant on each exhale. The tremors in Harry’s shoulders began to subside. Under his hands, Louis felt Harry’s muscles begin to relax. Louis continued to breathe deeply, shifting the pressure from his fingertips to the warm flat of his palm. There was a soft, white light emitting from the bottoms of his hands. He felt Harry’s breathing even out little by little until finally Harry inhaled deeply, and let it out in a sigh. Thin wisps of a smoke like fog came out on his breath, swirling between him and Louis for a moment before being carried away on a breeze._

_Harry frowned in the direction the fog had been blown for a moment, before turning his frown to Louis._

_“What was_ that? _” he wondered aloud._

_Louis shrugged, “Just a bit of magic I’ve been reading about lately. Do you feel better?”_

_Harry wiped at his eyes and pulled Louis into a tight embrace. “I feel loads better.”_

Harry never said anything like that to Louis again. If anything, it seemed like he was even more willing to jump to Louis’s defense than before. Louis wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d found out that Harry still felt guilty every time someone used Louis’s blood status to attack him. Harry was very bad at letting go of guilt.

Louis added in the last of his halved beetle’s eyes and measured out a few more ingredients, tossing them into the briskly bubbling cauldron. He stirred the concoction seven times counterclockwise with his wand, and then left it alone. He would wait until the liquid turned opaque and coppery, at which point he would add in a single unicorn hair. After that he only had to crank up the heat and wait for it to thicken up a bit. He found that a thicker consistency allowed it to sit in place on the skin longer and really soak in.

A watery consistency was fine for minor bruises, but Niall wasn’t known to sustain minor bruises.

Niall was, surprisingly, the only case in which Louis knew the backstory to one of his friends’ neuroses. Niall’s oddity was that he would eat absolutely anything. If you caught a bug and said “hey Niall, eat this” he’d do it without a second thought. Liam had once pointed out that the bread he used for a sandwich was moldy, and he’d said “huh, I guess it is” and finished off the sandwich in two large bites. Louis and Zayn had had to combine their strength to force a potion down his throat, just to be safe.

Anyone who didn’t know better would probably think Niall was just weird, or gross, or had never heard the words ‘food safety.’ Louis had thought that too, at first. He even told that to Niall once, in their third year.

Niall had responded by looking him dead in the eye, very seriously saying “poverty kills the picky,” and then moving on as if nothing had happened.

It didn’t come up again until their sixth year, in the wee hours of the morning, in the room of requirement.

_Though the house rivalries at Hogwarts were nothing like they’d been a decade or two before, there were still downsides to having your closest friends all be from different houses. One of the biggest ones being that it could be extremely difficult to see your friends any time after dinner. To combat this issue, Louis, Harry, Liam, Niall, and Zayn would all sneak off to the room of requirement once a month or so for a good old-fashioned sleep over._

_In a brilliant stroke of luck, Liam had stumbled across the room when he was only in his second year. He’d been wandering back and forth on the 7 th floor, unsure of where he was and in desperate need of a map, when suddenly a door revealed itself in the wall. He opened it to find none other than a closet full of maps and compasses._

_Since then, they had finely tuned their requests for the room. This particular night, the room had presented itself to them with one excessively large bed piled high with pillows and blankets, a table overflowing with snacks and drinks, two bathrooms, and a few chessboards and card decks._

_The first few times they’d taken advantage of the magical room it had given them five individual beds, which was okay, but they always ended up migrating into one by the end of the night. At this point it was easier to just request one huge bed. They’d always been quite a tactile bunch._

_It was well after midnight, and they were all cuddled into a warm mass of arms and legs on the bed. Louis had his head resting in the lap of Zayn, who was absentmindedly dragging his fingers through Louis’s hair. Liam was sitting in between Harry’s legs, back pressed to his chest. Harry had his arms draped around Liam, chin resting on his shoulder. Niall was sandwiched in between Harry and Zayn, with the majority of Louis’s body (along with multiple pairs of legs) slung across his lower half._

_It was about that time of night when the conversation began to get deep._

_“Do any of you remember what it was like during the war?” Liam asked softly._

_Louis obviously hadn’t known anything about the war until well after it had ended, but the rest of the boys had at least one magical parent._

_“I’m just asking because, I don’t know, sometimes I think I do, but I can’t tell if the memories are genuine or if I’ve made them up.”_

_“I remember the day after it ended,” Zayn said, and Liam murmured in agreement, “but beyond that I just remember that my dad would read me each edition of the Quibbler when it came in.” Zayn’s family had always been somewhat eclectic. “That, and I remember listening to the radio with Doniya every night, because we were in charge of getting the password for the next day, but that’s it.”_

_Liam nodded. “I remember my sisters crying a lot, and I remember that I didn’t really know what was going on, but those are the only things I’m sure were real.”_

_They were all quiet for a moment before Niall spoke up._

_“I remember more than enough.” He mumbled, “Sometimes I wish I could forget it. Even tried to do a memory charm on meself once when I was like, 11, but Slughorn found me before I could do any real damage, which I definitely would’ve done.” He was quiet for a beat as he picked at his fingernails. “I’ve actually been thinkin’ about it lots lately; I don’t know. The war took, well, everything from my family, really.”_

_Louis shifted his position so he laid in between Niall and Zayn’s legs, with his cheek pressed into the top of Niall’s thigh._

_“What do you mean?” Louis asked._

_Niall sighed. “Well, when I was three or so me dad sacked from his ministry job. He’d really pushed for a lot of the muggle protection laws they had at the time, you know, so he was fired and right away labeled an undesirable. I don’t actually remember that, but it’s how the whole thing started.” He paused for a moment, gathering his thoughts._

_“He was furious about being fired, and he started speaking out about the corruption in the ministry. That was probably a bad idea, in hindsight, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. When word got back to the ministry that Bobby Horan was spreading their secrets, though… Well, I remember waking up one morning, must’ve been like four years old, and everything outside the house was on fire. We hadn’t even had that much to begin with, a few animals, me mum’s vegetable gardens, lots of barley, but it was all gone. You know how death eaters are, real thorough. They burned down all of our crops, destroyed all the seeds we had stored, killed all of our livestock, everything. We still had some potatoes, since they grow underground, but that was it. If they wouldn’t have torched all of our gardens, things still would’ve been hard, I think. We still would’ve been poor, but we wouldn’t have been so hungry.” He drifted off, eyes unfocused. Zayn scooted a little closer and slung a comforting arm around his shoulder._

_“After that, it just kept getting worse. My parents had to send Greg away to live with some family friends in South Africa because they couldn’t feed both of us and he’s older so they thought maybe he would understand. I didn’t see him for years after that. God, I missed him. Even after the war, things didn’t really start to get better for a while. Greg went to Hogwarts with almost none of the things he needed because we were dirt poor, and he still had to spend the summer holidays in Africa. My parents sold everything we had to buy food, including the house, in the end. At first, I’d thought that the death eaters were showing mercy by not just killing us right away, but after the second time I’d almost died from scurvy, I realized why they actually did it. They let us live because they knew we would suffer.”_

_Louis looked up to see tears running freely down Harry’s face. He looked pale._

_“Things didn’t even start to look up until after I’d turned seven and, god, I still can’t believe we lived like that for three years. But the owner of the Leaky Cauldron agreed to let us stay there long term if my parents both worked in the pub, and if I cleaned up rooms after people left. I still think he only agreed to it because I looked so pitiful. I remember that morning I’d found two thirds of a shepherd’s pie in the trash out back, and it was like Christmas. It was the best thing I’d eaten in months. I bet I looked about a centimeter from death, at that point._

_“The Leaky Cauldron felt like literal paradise; that’s how bad things had been. But there we had a roof, running water, and two free meals a day. I stopped getting sick all the time and put on some weight, I even got a present for Christmas that year. Mom and dad were able to find paying jobs eventually, and by the time I was 12 we were able to move into our own apartment. It wasn’t much, but I’d grown up thinking we were going to die cold and homeless, and suddenly I had me own bedroom. Can’t even describe how that felt. Greg was finally able to come home, too. He stayed at home for a few years after leaving Hogwarts, makin’ up for lost time, you know. Having the whole family together again, in our own home…wow.” Niall was crying too, now. “That was more than I’d ever hoped for.”_

_Unsure of what to say, Louis, Liam, and Zayn piled on top of Niall, trying to pass on any bit of physical comfort they could muster. Harry had excused himself to the bathroom, adding his body heat to the pile a few minutes later._

_Louis had thought he smelled a bit like vomit when he returned, but he didn’t say anything._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just thought I'd throw this in here, I put a lot of thought into each of the boys' wand type, so if you're interested in that you could look it up! It's mentioned in this chapter that Harry's is English Oak, so you could read about that on pottermore if you'd like. However, it would be much harder to find anything about Niall's wand since it's not wood, but preseli bluestone is supposed to heighten your sensitivity to sounds and vibrations, also opening your eyes a bit to the metaphysical. It helps its carrier speak the truth, and know when others are lying. It's supposed to provide foresight and clarity, and you can meditate with it to gain insight on past lives, though idk if that will come up in the story. It has very strong shamanic energy, and works with multiple chakras, but the soma chakra especially. It's also mentioned that the wand has a core of goldstone. Goldstone is associated with good luck, ambition, confidence, levelheadedness, and vitality. Both of these stones are good for divination. So that's what Niall's got going for him! all of this info was drawn from modern grimoires, and from people who practice witchcraft irl. Thanks for reading!!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is sort of short but the next one will be longer, let me know what you think!!

When Louis showed up to the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning, there was still no sign of Harry. Louis glanced down at his watch; he was even a bit late. He scanned again up and down all four long tables, but he saw only Niall Zayn and Liam sitting in the middle of the Slytherin table. Louis’s insides twisted uneasily. It wasn’t like Harry to miss two meals in a row without saying anything.

Louis turned away from where his friends were sitting and made his way towards the Hufflepuff table. He spotted a young boy sporting emerald green hair and golden freckles.

“Lupin!” Louis shouted.

Teddy looked up and, upon seeing Louis striding towards him, shook his head defeatedly. He didn’t have to ask what Louis wanted.

“He hasn’t gotten out of bed since noon yesterday. I tried to pull back the drapes around his bed but he’d charmed them shut. I tried pulling harder and they shocked me!” Teddy still looked mildly offended. “Bet he wouldn’t shock you, though.”

“Yeah, well, let’s hope.” Louis sighed and thanked Teddy before heading straight back out of the great hall. He would need to stop by the kitchens with Harry anyways.

He made his way to the lower levels of the castle. His mind wandered as he moved on autopilot. He’d been down this way more times than he could count. He walked a bit past the large still-life that he knew gave access to the kitchens, and stopped in front of a pile of large round barrels stacked to the ceiling. It was very inconspicuous, unless you knew what you were looking for.

He counted out the barrels, then counted them again, before raising his wand and carefully tapping out a rhythm onto one of the lids. Gaining access to the Hufflepuff common room was, in some aspects, easier than any of the others, because there was no riddle or changing password, but if you didn’t tap out the rhythm exactly right, one of the upper barrels would come open and douse the offender in vinegar. It had happened to Louis only a few times, but the thought of it always made him anxious.

The lid he’d been tapping on popped open, allowing him to climb through, and up the sloping dirt tunnel that eventually gave way to the round, low ceilinged common room. It smelled a bit like rosemary and basil, and something else Louis couldn’t put his finger on. Nobody was surprised to see a Ravenclaw in their common room, probably since Louis had been visiting regularly for many years now. No one was very surprised to see him in any of the common rooms anymore.

He let his fingers brush gently across the fern leaves that reached out towards him as he crossed the room.

Letting himself into the 7th year boys’ dormitory, he glanced quickly around the room. As suspected, it was empty apart from where he knew Harry was taking refuge behind his closed drapes. Harry’s moods were oddly infectious, whether they were good or bad. Louis could sense the negative energy heavy in the air, and he couldn’t blame the other boys for wanting to stay out of it.

Louis moved forward slowly and extended a hand towards the heavy curtains around Harry’s bed. He wasn’t sure if he was awake and didn’t want to startle him.

Right as he was about to grab the curtain he heard a muffled ‘go away, Teddy,’ and was hit with a startling _zap_ to his fingers.

Louis yelped and stumbled backwards, more out of surprise than pain. However, he still tried to shake the jittery, over-energized feeling out of his hand, to no avail.

Louis heard a rustling, and a moment later the drapes were pushed back, revealing Harry who was, quite frankly, a mess. He was sporting an impressive display of bedhead, accompanied by deep purple bags under his eyes, and bright red splotches on his otherwise pale face. Even from a distance, Louis could see that he was shaking. It probably didn’t help that his torso was bare, though.

“Shit, sorry Lou,” he said, rubbing at his salt-crusted eyes, “Teddy wouldn’t leave me alone all morning. Thought he’d come back from breakfast to have another go.”

Louis sat next to Harry on his patchwork quilt and pulled a vial of shimmering red potion out of his robes. He pushed it into Harry’s hands.

“I’m not sick, Lou. I don’t need medicine.” He tried to give the bottle back, but Louis just closed Harry’s hands around it again.

“Harry, I say this as a loving and concerned friend; you look like shit.” Harry rolled his eyes. “That’ll stop the shakes and give you a little strength until we get some food into you.”

Harry still eyed the potion suspiciously.

“What, do you think I’m trying to poison you? Just drink it, Styles, that wasn’t a suggestion.”

Harry sighed, but removed the cork and downed the potion in one go, coughing a bit afterwards.

“What was that, straight cinnamon?” he complained, but the color was already coming back to his face.

“It isn’t _only_ cinnamon. Just _mostly_ cinnamon.” Louis slipped the empty bottle back into his pocket. “I made it last night, just in case.”

Harry frowned. “Just in case what?”

Louis cocked an eyebrow. “Really? Just in case…this!” he gestured vaguely at Harry.

He huffed in response and pulled his knees up to his chest. He wore black and yellow checked pajama pants. Harry was quite into house pride.

 _‘Well, all pride, really.’_ Louis thought, eyeing the thread rainbow bracelet wrapped around his wrist.

Louis placed a warm hand on Harry’s knee.

“Come on, love, I know how you are. Just tell me happened.”

Harry shook his head and dropped it onto Louis’s hand.

“Don’t want to talk about it.” He groaned.

Louis squeezed his knee in what he hoped was a comforting way.

“I think it would probably help if you did. I think you probably agree, too.” He coaxed.

Harry groaned again, much louder this time.

“I yelled at a little girl and made her cry.” He said, finally. He looked angry, but Louis could see his eyes were welling with tears.

Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. “God, I bet she was a first year. She was playing with a friend by the vegetable patch and she fell into one of my giant pumpkins and just, well, completely smashed it, and…I mean, my god, it doesn’t even _matter,_ it’s just a fucking pumpkin, but it took me by surprise and I was so _angry._ Fuck!” he tipped his head back and groaned again, louder still.

For a moment, Louis didn’t know what to say. He dropped his hand and moved to sit cross legged in front of harry.

“Well, all things considered you seem to be doing pretty well?” he said tentatively. Harry wasn’t hyperventilating, and he was barely crying.

He met Louis’s eyes, looking unamused.

“I threw up three times yesterday and once already today.”

“Jesus Chist, Harry.” Louis sighed. He chewed on his lip for a second before patting Harry on the shoulder and moving to get up.

“Put a shirt on, we’re going to the kitchens and then I’ll help you find this little girl to apologize, if that’s what you want to do.”

Harry made a face. “I just told you I’ve vomited four times in the last twenty-four hours. What about that makes you think food is a good idea?”

“How about the part where you haven’t kept anything down in the last twenty-four hours?” Louis pulled a shirt out of one of Harry’s drawers and tossed it in his direction. “Anyways, you aren’t going to throw up again. That potion was chock full stomach-calming stuff.”

Harry shook his head, “Unbelievable,” he breathed, “you really do know me too well.” He pulled the shirt over his head, and Louis swore he saw the ghost of a smile on his face as Harry pulled his messy hair back into a bun.

“I do. Pretty soon I’m going to find out that you’re an undercover spy, and you’re going to have to start a whole new life with a new name and everything.”

The corners of Harry’s lips twitched up a bit.

“Louis, if you know that they’ll send me away, why are you still trying to figure it out?”

Louis grinned and aimed a pair of jeans for Harry’s head, before leaving to let him dress in peace.

Harry was joking with him, and personally, that felt like a win.

*

Louis was waiting for Harry outside the entrance to the kitchens, pleasantly full of hash browns and sausages. They’d had their breakfast and a bit of a chat with some of the elves, and were just about to head off for the upper levels of the castle when Harry suddenly realized he’d forgotten something, and dashed back towards his dormitory.

He reappeared a few minutes later carrying a decorative pot with a single flower in it, which was crowned with many layers of vibrantly purple pointed petals. Louis wasn’t sure what it was called, but it had been sitting on Harry’s bedside table for years.

“What’s that for?” Louis questioned.

Harry shrugged, “I don’t think it’ll feel like enough if I just say I’m sorry. Now, have you found any new shortcuts across the castle recently?”

Louis chuckled, “Sadly, no.”

They chatted about nothing in particular as they made their way towards the complete opposite corner of the castle, heading for Gryffindor tower.

“Do you even know the password?” Harry asked as they ascended the final flight of stairs.

“No, but it’s noon on a Saturday. If I know Liam, which I’m quite sure I do, he’s sitting under one of the big windows, ¾ of the way through the charms essay that isn’t due for another week.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Is that what you think?” he said, “Well, that’s a very good guess, but I think it’s much more likely that he’s working on the transfiguration homework that was assigned yesterday. Also, I’ll go out on a limb and say he’s less than half way done, because he always ends up needing to restart for some reason or another.”

Louis laughed softly, Harry could turn just about anything into a competition.

When they finally approached the portrait of the fat lady, she sighed dramatically.

“How many times must I tell you boys, no entry without the password!”

Louis rolled his eyes but otherwise ignored her, and instead took a deep breath and shouted for Liam as loudly as he could, which was quite loud. The fat lady plugged her ears and had just begun scolding him when the portrait swung open.

Liam stood in the entryway, looking disgruntled.

“Are you _trying_ to raise the dead?” he asked sarcastically. “What do you want, then? You know I’m busy.”

“Busy with what?” Louis asked, pushing past Liam and into the common room.

Liam frowned, “My charms essay,” he said.

Louis grinned triumphantly at Harry.

“Now, wait just a second Lou,” Harry drawled, turning his attention to Liam, “how far through your essay are you?”

Liam rolled his eyes, looking quite frustrated with himself.

“I’ve only got about a third of it done. I was almost finished with it, but I had to start over entirely because-”

“-Wait,” Louis stuck a hand out to cut him off, “let me guess, tipped over your inkwell?”

“No, no,” Harry cut in, tapping a finger on his lower lip and studying Liam through narrowed eyes. After a few moments he snapped his fingers and pointed at Liam, “you got to the final paragraph and then realized that your thesis was no good!”

Liam ran a hand down his face and nodded, causing Harry to punch a victorious fist into the air.

“Was there an actual reason you came up here, or did you just want to make a guessing game out of the pitfalls of my life?”

Harry’s spirits dropped noticeably, and he clutched the plant in his hands a bit tighter as he told Liam a brief summary of what happened

Liam, to his credit, didn’t look surprised, just concerned. He knew Harry well enough to know how this must’ve been affecting him.

When Harry had finished describing the girl to Liam, Liam sent one of the Gryffindor girls that had been studying in the common room up to get her. A minute later, a small girl with dark hair pulled back into many tight braids appeared at the bottom of the girls’ stairwell. Her face flushed a bit when she saw Harry and she dropped her gaze to the floor, not wanting to look at him.

Harry was shaking again, but he moved towards here and got down on one knee so they were at eye-level with each other.

“Hello, my name’s Harry,” he said softly, extending a hand towards her, “what’s your name?”

She put her small hand in his and shook it a bit. “Ella,” she said.

“Ella? Well that’s a very pretty name, and you’ve got very pretty hair, too.”

She reached up and pulled at one of her braids a bit, just staring at Harry, before she started babbling.

“I’m so sorry about your pumpkin Harry, I really didn’t mean to! I just tripped, I didn’t mean to hurt your plants at all!” her lip was starting to quiver

“Hey, hey,” Harry set down his flower and took one of her hands in both of his, “I didn’t come here because I’m angry at you, okay? I came here because I never should’ve yelled at you, and I want you to know how sorry I am.”

She sniffled a bit, “Really? But I- I smashed your-”

Harry shook his head very seriously, “it’s just a pumpkin, Ella. I should’ve never yelled at you over a silly plant. And to show you how sorry I am, I’ve brought you another silly plant.” He smiled at her a bit, and she returned it shyly.

Harry picked up the potted flower and held it up between them.

“Now, this is a very special flower, okay? This flower is magic.”

Her eyes widened a bit and she reached out to gently touch one of the petals.

“What does it do?” she asked.

“If you pluck one of the petals and put it under your pillow before you go to sleep, you’ll wake up in the morning feeling bright and cheery no matter what. You won’t have any bad dreams, either.”

She breathed a soft ‘wow’ and carefully took the pot from Harry’s hands.

“It’ll also make your whole dormitory smell lovely.” Harry smiled, watching her lean in and sniff the flower. “You just need to water it once a week and keep it in a sunny spot. Can you handle that?”

Ella nodded excitedly.

“And I do want to make sure you know how sorry I am, Ella. Do you think you can forgive me?”

Ella nodded again before setting the flower down by her feet and leaning in and wrapping her small arms around Harry.

Louis could no longer see Harry’s face, but he assumed it was adorably surprised.

Harry only hesitated for a second before hugging her back, engulfing her with his large body.

“If you ever need help with your herbology, you let me know, okay?”

Ella smiled brightly, “Thank you Harry!”

Louis was almost sure he saw Harry wipe at a tear on his cheek as he said, “No, thank _you.”_

Harry stood up and waved goodbye to his new friend before he and Louis made their way out of Gryffinor tower, leaving Liam to study in peace.

“Harry, that was a very nice thing that you did, but are you going to be okay without that flower?” Louis tried to keep his tone casual, but he was more than a bit concerned.

Harry sighed and was quiet for a beat. Apparently, he wasn’t sure.

“I took a clipping first, and they grow really quickly. I should have a new one in, I don’t know, ten days or so? I’ll probably be fine for ten days. Plus, I mean, did you see her face?”

Louis nodded but said nothing. He often thought Harry could be too self-sacrificing for his own good, but he knew there was no point in telling Harry that.


	4. Chapter 4

Harry, of course, swore up and down that he was feeling just fine, but Louis noticed a change in him almost immediately. Whereas he was usually sunshine personified, ever since he gave away that flower he was more of a light drizzle.

Today, though, he was a dark, brooding sky. He was air thick with humidity, and the sound of distant thunder.

Louis and Harry sat across from one another at a desk in the Hufflepuff common room, with Teddy Lupin occupying the side across from the wall. Louis had a book open in his lap and was working on translating a clay tablet, while also speaking up every few minutes or so to make suggestions for Teddy’s History of Magic essay. Harry was supposed to be sketching the salamander that sat in the small cage in front of him, but so far he’d only gotten out his quill and stared at his blank parchment, cheek resting on his hand, for 15 minutes straight. Louis had taken it upon himself to start a small fire under the lizard, as Harry was apparently too out of it to feed it the pepper flakes that sat in a pile on the desk. Louis was running low on salamander blood, but he imagined Harry would be quite upset with him if he let this one die.

“The Salem witch trials were in America, not Australia. Honestly Teddy, do you pay _any_ attention in class?”

“ _Nobody_ pays any attention, Louis. It’s physically impossible.” He scratched out his last sentence.

The salamander had fallen asleep, seemingly realizing its attempts to gnaw its way out of the cage were futile. This would be the perfect time to draw it, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed.

“Harry?” Louis said, “ _Harry?”_

Harry did not respond.

Before Louis could do anything else, Teddy reached over and pushed Harry’s elbow out from under him. Harry’s head dropped like a rock onto the desk before he jumped back in his chair, squinting around at the common room until he seemed to remember where he was. His eyes fell on the salamander, which was now fully awake and excited. Harry groaned and rubbed at the bump that was surely forming on his forehead.

“Dick move, Teddy.” Louis gave him a whack on the back of his head.

“Yeah,” Harry whined, “dick move.” But he didn’t seem to have it in him to say any more than that.

Louis shot Harry a concerned glance. His skin had an odd greyish hint to it, and his whole body seemed to be trembling slightly. What worried Louis the most, though, was his face. It had been completely devoid of emotion for about two days now.

“Harry, you need to go to sleep.”

Harry didn’t even attempt to hide his eye roll.

“Right, Lou, I should just go to sleep. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Here I’ve just stayed up and played checkers the last six nights in a row.”

Louis bit his tongue until he was sure he wasn’t about to say anything rude. He would be crabby too if he had hardly slept for a week.

 _‘Patience,’_ he thought, _‘channel your inner Hufflepuff.’_

“Alright, that was fair,” he said eventually, “obviously you would sleep if you could. There’s just…there’s got to be _something_ that we can do, right?”

Harry shrugged and shook his head.

“Zayn made me a potion that guarantees a solid eight hours of sleep, but that means I couldn’t wake up even if I, you know, needed to… for whatever reason.”

Louis knew Harry was afraid he would get stuck in a bad dream. His chest ached for his friend.

“And I’m especially boned today because I’d agreed to help Professor Longbottom repot a Venomous Tentacula, and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Harry went very suddenly from being sad and tired, to being full on distraught. His voice took on a high, anxious tone, and quivered slightly.

“Merlin, what am I going to do?! I’m obviously not fit to be handling deadly creatures but he can’t do it on his _own_ and it’s got to be done today. Fuck, what am I supposed to tell him? He’s my favorite professor, I can’t just bail on him! Ugh, _fuck._ ”

Teddy’s hand shot up “I’ll do it, I’ll do it!” he cried.

Louis frowned at him. “This year’s been going quite well, Teddy. Nobody wants to spoil it with a dead child.”

Teddy huffed indignantly.

Harry shook his head. “He’s right, Teddy. You’re just fine at herbology, but this is dangerous stuff. Venomous Tentaculi don’t like being transplanted. If you wanted to tell Longbottom I can’t do it, though….”

Teddy suddenly realized he had plans with a friend, and scurried out of the common room.

“I don’t know what to do, Lou.” Harry sounded like he was possibly on the verge of tears. “I’d hate to let Longbottom down, but I…I _can’t_ do it!”

Louis chewed on the inside of his cheek. He’d had a bit of an idea in the back of his mind for a few days now, but it was a very intimate bit of magic, and also very difficult. He’d never tried it before and frankly he wasn’t sure that it would work. Beyond that, he didn’t know how Harry would react to it.

But, looking across the table at the mess that was his best friend, Louis knew that he was going to have to try. He couldn’t stand by and leave Harry in this state when he knew he could possibly help.

“Let’s go up to your room. I might have an idea.”

“An energy thing?” Harry asked.

“Sort of,” Louis mumbled, “just…come on, let’s give it a shot.”

Harry followed Louis up to his dormitory without another word.

There wasn’t anyone else in the dormitory at the moment, but they still both crawled onto Harry’s bed and pulled the curtains shut around them.

“Do you want to…” Louis nodded vaguely at the curtains, “best if we aren’t interrupted.”

Harry nodded. With a flick of his wand, the curtains began sewing themselves shut.

“Do you think that’s enough?” he asked.

Louis thought for a minute before putting an impenetrable charm on the bed-hangings around them. It never hurt to be extra careful. He was quiet for a beat as he tried to remember everything he needed to do, while also trying not to think too much about it. It wouldn’t be helpful to anyone if he was a bundle of nerves. Every time he’d thought about trying this with Harry, his chest filled with racing, fluttering anxiety, and his heart took off at top speed.

“Should I…?” Harry raised his eyebrows and started slowly unbuttoning the top of his shirt. Louis had done a considerable amount of energy work with Harry, and they’d found out that it was most effective if there was skin on skin contact.

“No, no.” Louis said, reaching up to still Harry’s hands. “This one is a bit different. Just roll up your sleeves a little and give me your hands.”

Harry left the top few buttons of his shirt open but did as he was told while Louis took deep breaths, trying to quell his anxiety. He put a quick charm on his wand, causing it to tick back and forth like a metronome.

“Sorry, this just…. has to be precise. Can you hear that?”

“Yes.”

“Is it… distractingly loud?”

“No.”

Louis sighed. He felt like he was stalling.

He took Harry’s hands and flipped them so his palms were facing up. Louis held gently onto his wrists and began rubbing his thumbs in small circles over the soft part right where arm met hand. He could feel Harry’s tendons under his skin.

“Okay, so we need to breathe opposite each other, alright? When I breathe in, you breathe out, and all that. How about four beats each, does that sound okay with this tempo?”

Harry nodded.

“And when I tell you to, you need to open your mouth, but keep the breathing pattern the same. That’s important. And just… ehm… yeah, just follow my lead, then.”

Harry nodded and watched as Louis started breathing deeply and evenly, the two of them easily falling into a pattern.

Louis closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of Harry’s skin beneath his. He focused his attention on his breathing, and the repetitive movements of his hands. He allowed the monotony to relax him.

His eyes blinked open and he saw Harry staring intently at him.

The corner of Louis’s mouth twitched up into a smile.

“Gotta relax, Haz.” He said on his outbreath.

“You relax me.” Harry hummed, but he closed his eyes anyways.

Okay, so Louis needed to not think about that.

He pushed Harry’s words back into the dustiest, most cobweb filled corner of his consciousness, but he could still feel their warmth seeping into his chest.

 _‘Oh well. The better I feel, the better this should work, right?’_ He thought, embracing the lightness that was creeping into the marrow of his bones.

He kept breathing and tracing slow circles onto Harry’s wrists until he felt they had the patterns down pat. He’d never even attempted this before, so he wasn’t totally sure what cues he was looking for to begin each step. He was just going to move on when it felt right, and hope for the best.

When it no longer required any conscious effort to maintain their breathing pattern, Louis began uttering soft but clear chants on each exhale.

_“Uoy ote vigi, uoy morf ekati……. emo tevigu oy, emmor fektu oy…..”_

As soon as he spoke the first chant, he could already feel the magic begin to take effect. Specifically, he felt the energy start to drain from his left hand. That was good, though. That was how it was supposed to work. He would start to feel tired in his left hand, and from there it would spread through the rest of his body. Harry would get the opposite, feeling energy instead of fatigue start to spread through his body from his left hand.

As if on cue, Harry stretched and flexed his fingers.

It took an immense amount of focus for Louis to keep his thumbs moving at an even pace, now that one of his hands felt dead tired. He opened his eyes for a moment and saw the white light emitting from all the spots where his skin touched Harry’s, which meant he was doing it right. He also noticed that Harry’s left hand was starting to glow softly, and that the glow was slowly creeping its way up to his elbow. He turned his attention to his own hand, which was looking increasingly dull and grey.

He closed his eyes again, devoting all of his attention to the chants and the circling of his thumbs. The big challenge came when the fatigue hit his chest. He kept his breathing even, but only barely. After that point, breathing no longer happened on autopilot. He had to focus on the ticking of his wand to keep his breaths in time, focus on the words that he was saying so they wouldn’t come out mumbled, and focus on his thumbs to keep the movements even and constant. Each individual factor felt so difficult that he thought it really needed his full attention, but he had to divvy it up evenly, lest he break the spell.

Needless to say, it was quite challenging.

After many more minutes of this Louis felt the final remaining trace of energy drain from his right hand. He was at last able to stop chanting. He breathed deeply. It was still difficult, especially now that veins seemed to be running with lead, but it nonetheless felt like a relief to focus on one less thing.

He opened his eyes again, to see Harry’s whole body glowing. It wasn’t extreme or obnoxious, just a gentle light radiating from his skin. From that, he assumed his entire body must be looking a bit dull and lifeless.

“Open your mouth…” he said softly.

Harry opened his mouth.

“Keep breathing, that’s important…”

Harry nodded. He kept his eyes closed, which Louis was very thankful for. Louis moved his hands off Harry’s wrists to either side of his face, rubbing circles with his thumb in front of Harry’s ears.

“Sorry about this, mate…”

_‘Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it.’_

Louis leaned forwards and pressed his open mouth to Harry’s.

_‘dontthinkaboutitdontthinkaboutitdontthinkaboutit’_

Harry gasped softly in surprise.

_‘Don’t think about it.’_

His mouth was soft and warm under Louis’

_‘Don’t think about it.’_

Harry, for what reason Louis could not imagine, threaded his hands into Louis’s hair.

_‘DONTTHINKABOUTIT’_

Harry exhaled into Louis’s mouth, and Louis breathed it in deeply. He imagined there must have been a thick, dark fog on Harry’s breath, because it felt like he was inhaling wood smoke.

Louis exhaled into Harry’s mouth, and Harry breathed it in deeply. He couldn’t see it to know for sure, but the fog on Louis’s breath should’ve been more of a faint white, and it should have felt soothing rather than harsh in Harry’s lungs.

They stayed like that for a few more breaths, and Harry’s hands slowly slid down to Louis’ neck. Louis couldn’t help but notice that Harry smelled like cinnamon, with undertones of something earthy, or that his mouth felt smooth as silk, and tasted slightly of chai.

Louis’ hands stilled on Harry’s face and after only a moment more, they pulled apart; mouths closing against each other before parting in something that felt distinctly like a kiss.

_Oh._

Louis could feel his face heat up as he scratched at the back of his neck and focused his eyes on his crossed legs as if they were the most interesting things in the world.

_“Lou…”_

“How do you feel?” Louis cut in. He tried to meet Harry’s eyes, but turned his focus away quickly when he felt his blush worsening.

Harry paused to assess himself. He stretched out a few of his limbs and placed a hand over his chest, frowning into space.

“I feel wide awake,” he said, hesitantly, “a little anxious, I think? But mainly awake and full of something…something light…” he drifted off for a minute, deep in thought. He was dragged back to reality when his gaze landed on Louis, who had curled in on himself, pale and trembling.

“Holy shit Lou, are you alright? You look like you’re dying.” He worried aloud, placing a hand on Louis’ shaking shoulder.

“Were you dying? Earlier?” Louis replied.

Harry’s eyebrows knit together in confusion.

“Uh, no, I don’t think so?”

“Then I’m not dying.” Louis said through clenched teeth.

He may not have actually been dying, but boy, he sure felt like he was. His heart was racing, but it felt like a vacuum had opened in the space where his internal organs were supposed to be. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself, clutching desperately to his body that felt as if it might collapse in on itself at any moment.

“I, I don’t-” Harry spluttered.

Louis let out a choked sob.

“My god, Harry, is this how you _felt?”_

Harry now looked panicked. He wasn’t used to seeing Louis cry, and he didn’t really know what to do.

He cupped Louis’ face in his hands and spoke softly, but urgently.

“Lou, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and honestly you’re kind of freaking me out.” He did his best to brush away the tears that were spilling down Louis’s cheeks. “Hey, come on sweetheart, don’t cry…”

The term of endearment only brought on more tears. Louis couldn’t remember Harry ever calling him sweetheart before.

“Honey, shh-shhh, come on, just take a deep breath and tell me what you did.”

Louis breathed as deeply as he could, but he still felt a bit like he was suffocating.

“Switched us.” He managed to choke out.

Harry’s head cocked to the side. “I’m sorry?” his eyes were soft.

“I switched us, Harry.” Harry’s tone came out a bit more clipped than he’d meant it to. “Our energy, our feelings, whatever. I switched us.”

Louis watched as at least five different emotions flashed across Harry’s face.

“You… Oh my god, Lou, you shouldn’t have done that! We need to switch back, you need to switch us back!” Harry stuck his wrists out at Louis, but Louis just shook his head and pushed his hands away.

“Don’t want to, couldn’t even if I did. That was really hard.”

Harry flipped over Louis’s hands and started rubbing circles into his wrists.

“I’ll do it, then.” He murmured, but Louis smacked his hands away.

“Harry, no. You’ve never even done this kind of magic and that was… _really_ hard.”

Louis clutched at his chest as he drew in deep breaths. He felt a bit like a fish out of water.

“Is my chest caving in?” He gasped, “I feel like there’s a vacuum inside me, I feel like I’m going to implode. Did you have a black hole in your chest?”

There was worry etched in every line of Harry’s face.

“Fuck, those are my feelings alright.”

“Why do I feel like I can’t breathe? Harry are you sure you weren’t dying?” It made no sense to Louis, but he felt so empty that he thought he might vomit.

Harry gripped his shoulders tightly to get his attention.

“I know it doesn’t feel like it, but I promise you’re okay. Physically, at least.” His eyes searched Louis’ face for a moment. “But…. if those are _my_ feelings, then maybe….” He trailed off again.

After a beat of silence, Louis was taken aback when Harry crawled straight into his lap. He wrapped one arm around Louis’ waist, where his hand rubbed warmly into the small of Louis’ back. His other hand came up to, quite literally, cradle the back of Louis’ head. Louis found it even harder to breathe for a moment as a ball of emotion sat like a rock in his throat. He let himself be pulled into Harry’s chest and he buried his face in Harry’s neck. He once again inhaled the scent of cinnamon and soft dirt, the smells mingling into something distinctly _Harry._

“Harry,” Louis whispered into his neck, “what…?”

Harry began combing his fingers slowly through Louis’ hair.

“Is this okay?” he asked softly, “I always felt like it would help me if someone did this, and if you have my emotions, so…. Does this help?”

Louis nodded as another round of sobs wracked through his body, brought on by the emotions he felt coming through every one of Harry’s touches.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat like that, but at one point he’d wrapped his arms around Harry’s waist and pulled him closer. He allowed himself to be comforted by the intimacy shared between them.

After a while the tears subsided, but he still felt suffocatingly sad. He felt himself crumble a bit as Harry climbed off his lap.

“How do you feel?” he asked Louis.

“I feel… I feel crushingly empty. I feel like if I stop thinking about it I might forget to breathe. I feel like I might throw up from being so sad.”

“Fuck,” Harry breathed, “Lou, you really shouldn’t have done this. If you would’ve asked-”

“You would’ve said no.” Louis supplied. “Look, it’s fine, ’ve got nothing to do today so I can just sleep it off.” He felt like the whole world was moving too fast for him. Was he talking slowly? He couldn’t tell.

Harry sighed. “That’s not going to fix everything, Lou. Sleep is important, of course, but…god, you just threw yourself straight into one of _my_ depressive episodes! You didn’t even get a warmup stretch, you just jumped straight into the game and - _fuck-  y_ ou didn’t even know what you were getting yourself into!”

The words ‘depressive episode’ ricocheted around Louis’ skull for a moment, until he found his voice again.

“Are you telling me that flower was an _antidepressant??_ And you just _gave_ it _away?!”_

“Well-”

“Harry are you _insane?!”_ Louis’ voice was shrill _,_ “Fuck, this is how I imagined it would feel after a dementor’s kiss, and you let yourself feel this way by _choice?!”_

Harry, clearly, didn’t know what to say.

Louis shook his head. “We’ll talk about that later. For now, shit, I just need to get back to my tower and sleep.” He started to move towards getting up, but Harry pushed him firmly back down.

“You’ll sleep here.” He said, pulling back his patchwork quilt. His tone left no room for argument. “I know you don’t actually want to go up all those stairs, and this way I can get you up for dinner without having to get quizzed by that stupid door.”

Louis ran his hands through his hair, not in the mood to argue. “Fine, but you still have to go help Longbottom, okay? That was the whole point of this.”

Harry nodded, looking distracted.

Louis nudged him in the ribs, eyebrows raised.

Harry fixed his attention onto his lap for a second. “It’s just…. So, these are _your_ feelings?” Louis nodded, but Harry seemed to be done speaking. Louis didn’t have the energy to pry.

“Harry,” he whispered. He knew he was talking softly, but even the smallest noise sounded deafening. “Harry, how do I make this go away?”

Harry turned his attention to Louis and chewed on his lip for a moment before sighing.

“Well, I mean, you _can’t_ , really. I know a few things that can help with some of the worst of it, but those are hard because they take energy, and…wait,” his eyes brightened a tad, “ _I_ have energy, and I have more than enough time before I need to be in the greenhouse too!”

He sprung off the bed and started digging through his drawers, eventually pulling out a pair of black pajama pants with yellow pinstripes and a soft, mustard yellow shirt. He tossed both in Louis’ direction.

“Very comfortable, but still nice enough that you won’t feel so gross.” He said, more to himself than to Louis. He then moved and quickly started clearing the rubbish off his bedside table until it was neat and tidy, holding only a clay pot with a thin green shoot erupting from the dirt. “Alright. I’m going to go make tea, but while I’m gone I need you to put those on and get under the covers. I don’t want to hear a single protest, okay?”

Harry paused on his way towards the door and put a hand over his chest.

“Oh, I feel _bossy.”_ He winked in Louis’ direction. “These really must be your feelings, then.”

In spite of everything, Louis chuckled. As soon as the door shut behind Harry, however, it felt like too much work to keep the smile on his face. He changed quickly and settled himself with his back against Harry’s headboard, covers pooled in his lap. It was only a few minutes before Harry reappeared with a steaming mug in one hand. The other circled lazily above it, stirring it with wandless magic. He handed it over to Louis, who was unsurprised to find it prepared exactly to his liking.

He moaned a bit as the drink warmed him from the inside.

“Shit, that’s good.” He muttered. “Almost fills the void, that does.”

Harry snorted and sat himself on the edge of his bed.

“Let’s see, what else can I do…” he pushed his hair back as his fingers drummed out a rhythm on his leg. He moved to prop open the porthole window above his bed, mumbling something about fresh air.

Louis would normally feel uncomfortable with Harry fussing over him like this, but he welcomed it in his current state. He breathed in the sweet smell of the outdoors and felt the cool air kiss his cheek. He still felt like he couldn’t breathe quite deep enough, but he no longer felt like he was about to vomit up all his (Harry’s?) sadness.

Gentle laughter floated in on the breeze.

“Harry, can I ask you something?” Louis held the mug in both hands and stared into the cup at the loose tea leaves swirling at the bottom. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you feel like this? Or tell me about all these things that help you when you’re down?”

Harry pursed his lips and shrugged.

“I guess I’m not as good at asking for help as you are. I bet that’s why you’re a Ravenclaw.”

“I’m a Ravenclaw because I’m damn brilliant.” Louis grumbled.

Harry grinned at him fondly, “That too.” He said, “Now, you should try and get some sleep. I need to head down to the greenhouses soon, but I’ll hang out in the common room when I’m done in case you need anything. Sound good?”

Louis nodded as he made himself comfortable, lying down and pulling Harry’s blankets up around his face. They were soft but heavy over him, making him feel secure.

“Sleep well, love.” Harry drawled, pulling the curtains closed.

“Thank you, petal.” Louis said, halfway into the pillow.

Harry pulled the curtains back open, giving Louis a curious look.

“Petal?”

Louis pulled the covers higher on his cheeks, hiding the blush that he felt creeping in.

“Dunno where that came from, honestly. I blame your feelings. They’ve got me all… all messed up.”

“My feelings…right…” Harry said, a small smile playing at the edges of his lips.

He shut the curtains again and was gone, and Louis was asleep only minutes later.

*

When Louis woke up to a hand gently shaking his shoulder, he felt like he had been asleep for ten minutes at most.

_‘Harry must’ve forgotten something.’_

However, when he opened his eyes, he saw that there was no longer sunlight streaming through the window above him. Sliding his glasses onto his face, a starry sky came into focus.

“What time is it?” He mumbled. His voice was raspy with sleep, and his body felt heavy.

“About 8:30,” Harry said.

Louis slid his fingertips under his glasses to rub at his eyes.

“Wait,” he slid the glasses down his nose and looked around at the now blurry room. “didn’t I have my contacts in?”

Harry sat at the edge of the bed and gestured towards a small white case on the nightstand.

“I woke you up to take those out, remember? I thought you said you weren’t supposed to sleep with them in.”

Louis had no memory of that.

“Anyway, I brought you some food. I figured the Great Hall might be a little, uh, noisy, for you.”

Louis pushed himself into a sitting position, suddenly realizing how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten for a solid 11 hours. Harry conjured up a shining silver tray and placed it over Louis’ lap, passing him a foil covered plate.

Louis pulled back the foil to reveal a heaping pile of chicken tikka masala, surrounded by a colorful assortment of roasted vegetables. The smell had his mouth watering instantly.

“I told Tiggy that you weren’t feeling well, so she said she put a little extra love in it.” Tiggy was an elf who worked in the kitchen who happened to be especially fond of Louis. “I think by ‘love’ she meant rosemary.”

“Tastes like love to me,” Louis said, through a mouthful of bell pepper.

Harry lit the old oil lamp on his bedside table and grabbed Louis’ mug before disappearing out of the room, returning some minutes later with fresh tea. They sat in silence for a bit as Louis packed away the food he’d been given. Maybe he was just extra hungry, but he swore it was the best food that he’d ever tasted. He barely stopped to come up for air until the plate was cleared, at which point it vanished, and Harry did away with the tray.

Harry sat himself more fully on the bed, hands wrapped around his own mug of tea. He must’ve showered after he’d finished in the greenhouse, because he looked fresh and clean. He asked Louis how he was feeling.

“I sort of feel like my body is only halfway here, but that might be because I’m still waking up. I definitely don’t feel _as_ bad as before.”

“That’s good to hear,” Harry smiled, “because we’re having a sleepover with the boys tonight.”

“A sleepover?” Louis raised his eyebrows. He was feeling better than before, but he wasn’t sure that he was up for that.

“I know it doesn’t sound like something that would help, but trust me. My feelings, remember?”

Louis, to his credit, only whined a bit.

“Come on,” Harry said, “No use dawdling.”

And just like that, Louis was pulled out of the warm comfort of the bed.

*

Stepping into the relative brightness of the main castle, Louis noticed an angry red cut running from Harry’s cheek down under his jaw.

“Tentacula get you?” Louis asked, stopping Harry in the corridor and pulling out his wand.

“Oh yeah,” Harry chuckled, showing Louis his arms which were covered in smaller scratches, “Professor Longbottom offered to patch me up right away, but I told him not to as none of these were fatal.” Louis rolled his eyes. He never thought Harry was careful enough. “I just got trace amounts of venom in me, and it’s never too early to start building up a tolerance.”

“I’d really rather you got _no_ venom in you.” Louis scolded gently, hovering the tip of his wand over the cut on Harry’s cheek. The skin pulled itself back together seamlessly. Harry wouldn’t let him fuss over the ones on his arms though, saying they didn’t have the time for Lou to heal each individually. Louis disagreed and got to a few of them before Harry snatched the walnut wand out of his hands.

“Hey, come on, the other guys are probably already waiting for us!” Harry grabbed his hand and dragged him along, up stairwell after stairwell, to the seventh floor.

As Harry predicted, the others were waiting in a small clump.

“Louis!” Niall shouted when he noticed them approaching, “Missed you at dinner to- oh, you look like shit, mate.”

Louis winced a bit at his volume. Niall was notorious for not having an inside voice.

“You always look like shit, but you don’t see me pointing it out.” Louis quipped. Niall thought that was hilarious and let the subject drop.

“Who wants to get the room open, then?” Liam asked, jutting his thumb towards the wall opposite them.

Harry raised his hand and stepped forwards before anyone else could volunteer. He turned around and stared at Louis for a second, eyes squinted. He turned back and walked to one end of the corridor, an air of determination in his stride.

He paced back and forth down the corridor, eyes narrowed in concentration, until a door materialized in the stone wall. The other boys moved quickly towards it, but Louis held back for a moment. The door reminded him strangely of the front door to his house, and suddenly his heart was swimming with emotion.

When he did make his way into the room, he was greeted with a scene quite different than what he’d expected, but still shockingly familiar.

“Harry,” he whispered, “this is… this is my _living room.”_

“Is it?” Harry raised an eyebrow. Louis felt like he was in a dream.

“I mean, no, not _exactly_ but…” he was distracted for a moment as Niall loudly dragged Zayn over to a coffee table on the other end of the room, atop which sat a miniature quidditch pitch, with a hovering set of miniature brooms.

“Come on Niall, you _always_ win!” whined Zayn, but he appeared to put up almost no fight.

Louis focused his attention back on Harry.

“How did you do this?” he wondered aloud, “You’ve never been to my house before.” The room was much bigger than Louis’ actual living room, and there was a pantry and mini fridge added in, along with a few extra couches. That being said, all the colors, the trim around the floor, the lived-in look of the furniture, it all felt intimately familiar.

“I wanted it to feel like home for you. I thought that would help.”

Louis tried to hide the fact that he was rubbing tears out of his eyes.

“Harry, why didn’t you ever _tell_ me about all of these things? I could’ve been helping you this whole time, I could’ve made you feel at home!”

Harry met Louis’ eyes, a light blush rising on his cheeks.

“You _always_ make me feel like I’m at home.”

Louis had to pause for a moment as his brain short circuited, because _what?!_

Louis’ tired brain could not even begin to comprehend all the kind things Harry had said to him today, but _this?!_ What was he supposed to _do_? How was he supposed to respond to that in front of all of their friends?

Liam, bless him, interjected at exactly the right time.

“Harry, I’m sure there was a reason for all…this,” he gestured vaguely to the room around them, “but in case you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any beds.”

“Oh…right…” Harry frowned, looking around the room.

Liam shook his head, laying a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“Last time it was the trampolines and now this? Remind me again why we still let you open the room?”

“Hey!” Louis snapped, “There’s no need to take that tone with him!”

Liam shot him an unamused look, entirely accustomed to being yelled at by Louis.

“What? We’re in a room that can give us, as far as we know, whatever we want, and you’re fine with sleeping on the floor? Come on, Louis.”

Louis frowned. “If this is my living room, I wonder…” he left Harry’s side and started pulling cushions off one of the couches.

“Why would this be your living room?” Liam looked thoroughly confused, gaze going back and forth between Harry and Louis.

“Here’s your bed, Li.” Louis stood proudly by the most comfortable looking pullout bed he’d ever seen. He walked back to his friends and rapped a knuckle against Liam’s temple. “What’s the point of all that ‘daring nerve and chivalry’ if you’ve got no problem-solving skills?”

“Merlin, you’re annoying.” Liam huffed, but the laugh that followed exposed his true emotions.

“Oi, idiots!” Zayn shouted. Liam snorted when Harry and Louis’ heads both snapped up in Zayn’s direction. They didn’t even protest the insult. “Come play! We’ll do teams of two.”

Liam pouted as the other two ambled over to the meter-long quidditch pitch.

“Come on, Li, we need a ref! You know how Niall cheats.”

Niall cackled as Liam bounced over to the rest of the group. Some people might be upset to be the permanent referee to their friends’ games, but not Liam. He relished any situation where he could enforce the rules, and have his friends actually listen.

“I want Louis!” Niall hopped up and down, bursting with energy.

“Oh no, absolutely not.” Zayn pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Two seekers against me and _Harry?_ No offense, mate, but come on.”

Harry shoved Zayn lightly. “You’re right, though,” he said, “putting me and Zayn on a team would be absolutely unfair. We _both_ suck.” He gave his friend a pointed look, and Zayn could not argue.

Niall chortled, “Oh fine, me and Harry against you tossers. Won’t make much difference, Louis _knows_ I’m better at quidditch than he is.”

Louis bit down on his lip and shook his head, laughing a bit. He was right, of course. Sometimes, on the quidditch pitch, Louis felt like Niall actually knew what he was about to do before he did it.

Harry sent Louis a concerned look, apparently worried that a bit of friendly trash talk would send him spiraling. Louis brushed it off.

“That’s true, Niall. You _are_ better at quidditch than me,” Niall raised his eyebrows, grinning from ear to ear, “which only makes it more _embarrassing_ that Ravenclaw has come in ahead of Slytherin for the house cup _three_ years in a row now, doesn’t it?”

Zayn, Harry, and Liam all hooted.

“Do you want some ice for that?” Zayn asked, a look of genuine concern plastered over his features. Louis wrapped an arm around Zayn’s shoulders, smirking smugly at Niall.

Niall was still smiling, tongue in his cheek, as Liam officially started the game.

*

_Harry was out for a walk with his mom, holding her hand as if he were a small child. She’d been chatting to him for some time, but he couldn’t make sense of anything she was saying. He didn’t know where they were, but the weather was pleasant. They were walking through a breezy, open meadow, filled with small blue flowers. The way they swayed in the wind reminded Harry of ocean waves._

_Looking further ahead, Harry noticed the waves of blue seemed to disappear suddenly. As Harry and his mother continued in this direction, he realized they were in fact walking towards the edge of a cliff._

_His mom was still speaking to him in the same calm, easy way. He still couldn’t understand what she was saying._

_“Mom,” he pulled on her hand, “mom, we’re going towards a cliff!”_

_It was as if she didn’t feel it at all. She moved steadily forward._

_“Mom, mom!” Harry was shouting now. The grass and flowers gave way to the rocky edge of the drop-off._

_“Mom it’s a cliff! You’re going to fall!”_

_“Is that so?” she asked, finally turning to face him._

_It wasn’t his mother at all, but an old woman with a scarred face and frizzy, blonde hair._

_“What?” Harry’s heart rate quickened, “Who are you?!”_

_She laughed wildly as she placed her hands on his chest and pushed him sharply backwards. He was sure he’d been a good way away from the edge, but as he stumbled backwards he suddenly felt the ground disappear under his feet._

In the dark, quiet room of requirement, Harry jolted violently awake. His heart was beating frantically as he tried to take in his surroundings, reminding himself that it was only a dream.

He heard a mumbled ‘alright, love?’ from behind him and, oh yeah, that warm mass pressed against his back was Louis.

He could feel Louis’ forehead resting against the base of his neck, his breath brushing gently between Harry’s shoulder blades.

Harry whispered, “bad dream,” and Louis wrapped an arm around his waist, pulling Harry more snugly into his chest.

“’s only a dream, bean.” he said softly. Harry felt the feather-light brush of Louis’ lips on his skin as he spoke. “Nothing’s going to hurt you while I’m here.”

“I know,” Harry breathed, and he meant it. He rested his hand over Louis’ and squeezed lightly. Louis squeezed his side in response.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the figures of other sleeping boys came into focus. There were three fold-out-couch-beds, and Liam had immediately called dibs on sleeping alone.

From his position, Harry could see the bed Niall and Zayn had taken. Niall was sprawled out on his back, with Zayn asleep right on top of him, face smushed against Niall’s chest. Zayn always said he wasn’t one to cuddle in his sleep, but he looked perfectly peaceful with Niall’s arm slung across his back.

Louis moved his hand to rub warm, slow circles over Harry’s tummy.

Something fluttered in Harry’s chest.

It was the same something that had begun doing somersaults whenever he looked at Louis all day. He recognized the feeling immediately, but had been hesitant to put a name on it. At first, he’d try to play this shaky, electrifying feeling off as anxiety, but as the day went on he’d been forced to admit that the feeling wasn’t negative at all. It was quite the opposite, actually.

He’d come to terms with the fact that he had feelings for Louis quite some time ago, but he’d never realized Louis felt like _this._

This racing, head-over-heels euphoria he felt whenever Louis said his name, it was new to Harry. He felt invincible around Louis, like he’d just downed a vial of liquid luck, and could do anything he set his mind to.

_‘Is that how Lou always feels around me?’_

The hand stilled on Harry’s stomach as Louis slowly drifted back to sleep. Harry followed suit not long after, sleeping through the rest of the night undisturbed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets are revealed, rules are broken, and Niall demonstrates his knowledge of the five D's of dodgeball

Wind battered against the outer walls of the castle on a grey Tuesday morning. In a deserted corner of the school library, huddled around an ancient wooden table, sat Harry, Louis, Niall, Zayn, and Liam. Louis was busy flipping through a dusty, faded book. Its cover had no title or author. What it did have was a splotchy brown stain that looked suspiciously like dried blood. Lucky for them, Professor Slughorn had given Zayn permanent access to the library’s restricted section after growing tired of always writing permission notes.

Liam shifted nervously in his seat.

“Just so we’re clear, I think this is easily the stupidest thing you’ve ever tried to do.”

Louis looked up from the book, gasping dramatically, “Did you hear that, guys? Liam doesn’t approve! If only you’d said something sooner!”

Liam had, of course, been telling them this at least once daily for the last week and a half.

“Come on, Lou, don’t be a dick.” Harry gave him a disapproving look. “He’s just trying to keep us safe. Even you know that this isn’t exactly a _smart_ idea.”

Liam grinned smugly at Louis, knowing that he wouldn’t argue with Harry.

Louis mumbled something incomprehensible and turned his attention back to the book in front of him.

“Really though,” Liam looked sternly between Zayn and Harry, “when did Azkaban stop being a formidable threat?”

Zayn pushed his glasses up on top of his head and grabbed the book from Louis’ hands.

“We don’t have all day Louis. Books have this helpful thing called an _index.”_ He ran a finger down the list of subjects in the front of the book before flipping pages quickly with his thumb. “But Li, as we’ve discussed many times this week, it’s not as if we can just go and register as anamgai. You know that they won’t let us as students, and this would be a lot harder to coordinate once we’re all graduated and going our own ways. We’ll register after the fact, once we’re allowed.”

Harry nudged Liam’s elbow, “Anyway, you’ll be Minister of Magic by, like, age 20, right? If we do get sent to prison, you can just let us out.”

Liam blushed and bit down on his lip in a failed attempt to suppress a smile.

“Ah, here it is!” Zayn’s eyes darted back and forth over the instructions for the complex potion, expression growing increasingly skeptical. “Guys, I don’t know how we’re going to get all these ingredients. Some of it will be in Slughorn’s personal cupboard, but _I’m_ sure as hell not about to steal from that.”

“I’ll do it.” Niall said immediately.

“Uh…okay,” Zayn looked at him curiously, “but even Slughorn won’t have everything, and some of these will have age restrictions on them at an apothecary. You know, because they don’t want kids doing…well…this.”

Niall raised his hand again, “Whatever you need, I can steal it.”

He received dubious looks from all around the table.

“Niall…” Liam had an extremely disapproving look on his face, “are you a _thief?!_ ”

“Liam, as a kid I had a choice between learning to steal and _starving._ ” Niall snapped, “Remember that? How my family had no money for food?”

Liam, at once, looked like a guilty puppy.

“Alright, alright,” Harry placed a comforting hand on Niall’s shoulder, “Liam obviously wasn’t thinking when he said that, Niall. You did what you had to to survive and nobody can hold that against you.” He looked pointedly at Liam.

Liam nodded, punching Niall gently on the arm. “Sorry, Nialler,” he said.

Harry squeezed Niall’s shoulder.

“There you go. And Niall, if you think you’re up to it, then we would love your help.”

Liam spoke up again.

“Okay, well, Niall’s thievery skills aside, you realize you’re going to have to go to Diagon Alley to get all this, right? How do you plan to get all the way to London without being caught?”

“Hadn’t thought of that…” Louis said softly, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

The boys were quiet for a minute, all trying to come up with a plan. They were too invested in this idea to give up before they’d even really begun. Even Liam, who wholeheartedly disapproved, had his face scrunched up in concentration.

Liam had learned long ago that once his friends set their minds on something, there was no talking them out of it. He still tried, of course, but once it became clear that his efforts were futile, he devoted his energy to helping them be as safe as possible in their idiocy. Louis thought privately that that was quite an admirable quality to have in a friend. In contrast, when Zayn thought they were doing something exceptionally stupid, he generally wanted nothing to do with it.

After an extended period of sighing and head scratching, Louis snapped his fingers.

“Gryffindor has their first quidditch practice tomorrow, right?”

“Uh, I think so?” Liam frowned.

Louis raised his eyebrows at Harry.

“I bet I know a certain alum that’s going to be there. Has Teddy mentioned anything?”

“Well, yeah,” Harry drawled, “but do you really think he’s going to help us with this? It’s just… _so_ illegal.”

 Louis shrugged. “Unless you can think of anything better, I’d say it’s worth a shot.”

Harry and Louis shared a few more significant looks before Niall stood up from the table.

“Well, if I don’t leave now ’m gonna be late for divination.”

“Let me know if you see how I did on my last Muggle Studies exam,” Zayn joked, tipping his head back and grinning up at Niall.

Niall chuckled, ruffling a hand through Zayn’s hair before leaving him with a wink and a ‘will do.’

Upon noticing the curious looks from his three remaining friends, Zayn cleared his throat and combed his hair back into place with his fingers. He snapped the book in front of him shut and pushed it back towards Louis.

“Well, I should be…uh…” he rubbed at the back of his head and pointed in the general direction of the library entrance before hurrying off.

“What do you think that was all about?” Liam muttered after Zayn was out of earshot.

Harry and Louis could only shake their heads and shrug.

*

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Liam asked as they made their way out of the castle and towards the quidditch pitch.

“Plan?” Harry raised an eyebrow. “That would’ve been a good idea. I don’t think we’ve got a plan.”

“The plan is to wing it.” Louis confirmed.

Liam stopped walking and ran a hand through his curly hair. “You lot are going to give me an ulcer, I swear.” He let out a frustrated breath. “So, we’re just going to walk up to a fully grown adult and say ‘hey, care to help us steal ingredients for a dangerous and illegal potion?’ That’s really what we’re about to do?”

“Probably won’t phrase it just like that.” Zayn joked, eliciting an eye roll from Liam.

Niall gestured towards the small crowd of people that were beginning to spill from the stadium. “Looks like practice is just ending, perfect timing!”

Liam groaned and mumbled a final ‘we’re all going to prison’ before Louis broke away at a jog. The other boys hustled to keep up.

“Teddy!” Louis called, waving a hand over his head, “How did practice go? Do I have anything to worry about for the first game? Give me the details.”

Teddy rolled his eyes and pushed back his lavender hair that had been dangling in his face.

“Keep it down, would you? The Gryffindor captain was close to having me thrown out as it is!”

Louis laughed loudly at that. He knew how much Teddy enjoyed watching quidditch, and he would feel a little bad if he got the boy banned from Gryffindor’s practices, but only a little.

Louis turned his attention to the dark-haired man standing next to Teddy; the reason they were here.

“And Mr. Potter, fancy seeing you here!”

Harry Potter looked a bit confused but smiled back politely. Louis had only met him once, a few years ago.

“Hello everyone,” he said to the small group of boys, “Louis, was it?” he asked, sticking a hand out for Louis to shake. He nodded. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you from Teddy.”

“All bad things!” Teddy quipped.

With a smile on his face, Louis asked if Teddy thought he could get through History of Magic without a tutor. Teddy stuck his tongue out at Louis, knowing that it was just an empty threat.

“Hello Harry,” their Hufflepuff friend stepped forward, taking charge of the conversation. His friendship with Teddy meant that he knew Harry Potter the best out of the five of them.

“Styles, always a pleasure.” Mr. Potter clapped a hand onto Harry’s shoulder. “Have you gotten taller since I last saw you?”

Harry chuckled, saying he probably had. “I’m hoping I’ll stop growing soon. I think my mum might disown me if she has to buy me any more new clothes.”

They made small talk for a few more minutes, before Zayn gave Harry a quick elbow to the ribs. They didn’t have all day.

“Right, right,” He said, brushing Zayn off. “So, Harry, we didn’t exactly come out here just for a chat. We have a bit of a favor to ask of you. We just… we need some… well, some advice, really.”

“Oh?” Mr. Potter raised an eyebrow, “Advice on what?”

Harry chewed on his lip for a second while he glanced around. There were a few groups of students chatting a short way away from them, but they seemed caught up in their own conversations, paying Harry and company no mind.

“We need advice on…” he lowered his voice a touch, “on sneaking off school grounds.”

All five boys stood nervously as Mr. Potter gave them a searching look. Nobody really thought that he would turn them in to the headmistress, but they knew it was a possibility, and they knew they would be in a world of trouble if he did.

The corner of his mouth twitched up into a small smile.

“Teddy,” he turned his attention down to his godson, “head back to the castle without me, okay? I’ll catch up in a minute. You don’t need to hear this.”

 _“What?!”_ Teddy whined, “Come on Harry, how come you never tell _me_ any cool stuff?”

“You’re 13, and I’m legally responsible for you. Plus, come on, I tell you cool stories all the time. Now go.” He gave Teddy a gently shove in the direction of the castle.

Mr. Potter waited to continue until they could no longer hear Teddy’s sour grumbling.

“So,” he said finally, smile growing, “what do you need to sneak out for?”

Harry rubbed at the back of his neck, mouth opening and closing a few times before looking to his friends for help. He didn’t want to share any more information than was necessary.

It was Zayn who spoke up in the end. “We need to get to an apothecary in London.” He said simply.

“London?” Mr. Potter’s eyebrows disappeared behind his black fringe. “Oof, that’s quite the trek, isn’t it? I don’t believe I know any secret passages that go that far.” He said, a tad sarcastically.

Harry sighed, “Of course, obviously not, yeah, well, thank you anyways-”

“Now, wait just a second, you’re 7th years, right? Can you apparate?”

“A few of us can,” Harry frowned, “but we still need to get off school grounds first, obviously.”

“That, I can help you with.” Harry smiled, “Follow me.”

With that, the six of them set off across the damp grass.

Louis was, privately, a bit relieved that this was going so well. He’d expected at least one comment about how sneaking off was dangerous or against the rules, but that comment didn’t seem to be coming.

They walked in silence for a spell, excited looks being shared between the boys. None of them had ever been able to find any secret passages that lead off school grounds, and even Liam had a bit of an extra spring in his step.

Instead of going into the castle, as Louis had expected, Mr. Potter lead them past Hagrid’s hut, and they skirted the edge of the forest for a minute before coming to a seemingly random stop. Was the secret passage in the woods?

Mr. Potter sighed, “So, as an adult with children of my own, I have to ask, you know that this is dangerous, right? You know how much trouble you could get yourselves into?”

 _‘Ah, yes,’_ Louis thought, _‘there it is.’_

“Believe me, we know.” Harry chuckled, giving Liam a look.

“Alright, well as long as you know. Here, let’s get a little closer.”

To Louis’ surprise, he led them in closer to the whomping willow.

“See that little gap in the roots?” Potter asked, pointing to a small black hole at the base of the tree. The boys nodded. “That’s the entrance to a tunnel that’ll bring you straight into the shrieking shack. By no means is it the safest, or easiest passage to get in to, but it’s the only one I know of that’ll let out somewhere private.”

“The shrieking shack?” Zayn sounded skeptical, “Isn’t that place, like, really haunted?”

Mr. Potter shook his head. “That’s a myth.” He waved his hand, “It’s abandoned and run down, sure, but not haunted.”

“Alright, well, as much of a relief as that is, how are we supposed to get in there without getting… pummeled?” Louis asked. Unlike Niall, he always stayed well away from this particular tree. He was very quick, but he didn’t like to tempt fate.

“See that knobby knot, just a bit to the left of the entrance? if you can find a way to touch that, the whole tree will freeze.”

At the back of the small clump of people, there was a soft gasp. Louis turned around to see who it’d come from, and his gaze landed on Niall. His mouth hung open slightly, and his eyes were wide.

“I’ve never touched the trunk.” He breathed.

“W-well, I mean,” Potter stuttered, “I was thinking something along the lines of levitating a stick?”

“No,” Niall whispered, still looking like he was in a slight trance, “’m gonna touch it.”

Five sets of eyes stared at Niall for a moment longer, nobody making a sound.

“I really think that’s…a bad idea…”

Louis wondered if Mr. Potter was already regretting telling him this.

*

Zayn and Louis sat next to each other in Ancient Runes, quietly flipping through their textbooks and scribbling down translations to be handed in at the end of class. Louis was working on deciphering messy carvings in a slab of petrified tree bark. He’d gotten the main idea of the message down and was now working on fleshing out some of the nuance.

There was the soft buzz of many people whispering coming from the opposite corner of the room. One of his classmates had made the mistake of mumbling to herself while doing her translations, and she only realized she’d been doing it once water started pouring out from her ears. Louis suspected she accidentally mumbled some ancient spell. In a collective effort of the people sitting nearest her, the stream had been reduced to a trickle, and multiple hand towels had been shoved into her collar. She was working on drying herself off with a jet of hot air from her wand.

“Zayn,” Louis said softly, “does this notch right here look like it was on purpose? I’m not sure if he’s saying he’s happy or excited to go back home.”

“I don’t- I don’t know, Lou.” Zayn’s voice took on a high, stressed tone. “I’m such shit at this, I don’t recognize a single one of these symbols! Fuck, remind me why I took this class?”

“Because you knew I wouldn’t let you fail. Christ, Zayn, come on.” Louis rolled his eyes as he flipped the chunk of rock right side up in his friend’s hand.

Zayn mumbled something to himself, a bit embarrassed but trying to hide it.

After flipping randomly through his book for a few more minutes, he spoke up again.

“What language is this?”

Louis glanced over again, scanning quickly over the ancient etchings.

He kept his voice low, as they were, strictly speaking, supposed to be working alone.

“Dwarvish. Try looking up Icelandic dwarves, but if not that then maybe Russian.”

Zayn flipped to the right section in his book and, after a moment of squinting back and forth between the page and the rock in front of him, he started translating. He wasn’t getting into the same amount of detail that Louis was, but Louis was being a bit of an overachiever.

“Hey,” Louis hissed, “London this weekend?”

Zayn looked up at him, eyebrows raised. He put his glasses back on from where they’d been resting on top of his head.

“I guess it’s better to do it sooner rather than later. Will it be all five of us?” he whispered, turning his gaze back to his book.

“Not Liam. Said he’s got too much homework.”

Zayn snorted softly. “’Course he does.”

“So, it’ll just be four, which is good, really, because-”

“Tomlinson!” An old witch barked from the front of the room.

Suddenly, Louis felt as if his teeth were glued together.

It wasn’t the first time a professor had resorted to magic to shut him up.

Louis huffed in annoyance but focused his attention back to the materials in front of him.

A minute later, Zayn nudged Louis with his knee.

“Lou,” he whispered, “what’s this symbol mean?”

Louis frowned at him, pointing to his mouth and shrugging.

“Oh, right.” Zayn murmured. He fished his wand out of his robes and attempted a counter-jinx under the table.

Louis wasn’t sure what Zayn did, but his jaw (still tightly shut) suddenly felt as if it’d received a hard, solid punch. He cried out in pain through his clenched teeth, hands shooting up to cradle his throbbing face. Around the room, multiple students jumped in surprise, turning around in their seats to see what the commotion was.

The professor didn’t even look up from the book she was reading.

“Do you take me for an idiot, Malik? Did you think it would be that easy?”

Zayn mumbled an apology, burying his reddening face in his book.

*

Saturday came, cloudy and cold. Walking outside, it felt as if the weather couldn’t quite decide whether or not it wanted to rain. Zayn had given each of the boys and himself a hearty mouthful of a warming potion he’d made to ward off the damp chill in the air. Niall had also gotten a shimmering gold vial of Felix Felicis, which Louis happened to know Zayn had gotten as a Christmas gift from his father the year before.

While there was an aura of anxiety hanging around the other three boys, Niall was simmering with determined energy as he strode through the damp grass. His confidence seemed to be genuine, however, as the beautiful potion was still tightly corked in his back pocket. Louis noticed, as he watched his friend march towards the monstrous, violently tempered tree, that he showed not the slightest hint of hesitation. Sometimes Louis thought Niall had a bit of a death wish. Though his resourcefulness and ambition had ultimately landed him in a silver and emerald striped tie, he had the unyielding fearlessness that many Gryffindors aspired to. Though this combination had landed him in some dangerous situations, it also meant that when he set his mind to something, he was truly a force to be reckoned with.

“Niall,” Harry’s voice broke the silence, “what’s that on your hand?”

Niall chuckled, “They’re protection sigils, mainly. Zayn went a little overboard putting them on me this mornin’.”

“What are sigils?” Louis asked, but nobody listened.

“Zayn, you use _sigils?”_ Harry asked, with a look of mixed shock and skepticism.

Zayn held up his hands, so Harry could see the tattoos inked into the backs.

“Haven’t you ever wondered what these were? Honestly Harry, pay attention to your surroundings.”

“What are sigils?” Louis questioned again, louder this time.

“They’re these,” Niall said, showing Louis the swirling, intricate patterns on the palms and backs of his hands. “I think this one is the coolest, though!” He lifted his thick green sweater to reveal a huge, ornately drawn pattern covering almost his entire torso. Smaller sigils also decorated his sides, flowing out of sight onto Niall’s back.

“Aren’t sigils just phony muggle magic?” Harry asked, “I thought they didn’t actually work.”

Zayn scoffed, “Of course they don’t work when _muggles_ use them, but where do you think they got the idea from? It’s old magic, but I can guarantee you that it works.

“So, what, do you just draw them on and that’s it?” Louis was closely inspecting the ink on one of Niall’s palms. As his sleeve fell towards his elbow, Louis realized that the sigils continued to wind down his arms, prompting him to wonder just how much of Niall’s body Zayn had adorned with this beautiful form of magic.

“Well, you draw them on, and then you have to get the energy into them, which is what really makes them work.” Zayn rubbed uneasily at the back of his neck.

“How do you do that?” Harry asked, eyeing Zayn’s hands with a new curiosity.

A pretty blush crept up Zayn’s neck, worsening when Niall winked at him. Nobody else seemed to notice.

“There’s no ‘right’ way to do it, it’s just, sort of, whatever feels right, I guess.”

Louis pushed Niall’s sleeve further up his arm.

“Okay, so how did you do it this time?” he asked.

“Look,” Niall distracted Louis, directing his attention to the ink on his bicep, “this one looks like a snake trying to eat its own tail, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, it sort of does…”

The boys came to a halt a safe distance away from the whomping willow. A gust of wind swept by, rustling their hair. The tree in front of them shuddered a bit, pulling its smaller branches in closer for warmth. Had Zayn not had the good sense to bring a warming potion, being outside would have felt rather miserable. Louis knew this because there was nobody else to be seen outside of the castle. A warm glow in the windows of Hagrid’s hut told them that even he would rather stay inside on a day like today.

However, Louis didn’t particularly want to push it.

“We’d best get on with it then. Getting sent to McGonnagal’s office would sort of ruin our plans for the day.”

Zayn frowned at Louis. “There’s no need to rush,” he said, “we can’t get in trouble just for standing near a tree.”

“Me and Harry sure as hell can.” Louis laughed, “If that woman caught the two of us loitering by this tree, in this weather, when nobody else wants to be outside, we would have detention before she even asked what we were doing.

“I don’t think that’s an exaggeration, honestly.” Harry said.

Zayn took a deep breath, clenching his jaw for a moment.

“You know, Niall,” he said, “now that we’re here, levitating a stick is starting to seem like a much better idea.”

Niall’s head whipped around so fast that it looked like it might pop off.

“ _What?!”_

“I mean, come on, this is _stupidly_ dangerous.” Zayn rocked his weight back and forth between his feet, looking like a bundle of nerves.

Niall moved so he was standing right in front of Zayn, grabbing him by the shoulders.

“That’s why I let you draw sigils on me for an _hour and a half_ this morning! I didn’t do that for the fun of it!”

Zayn blushed a little bit, stepping back slightly so he could better see Niall’s face.

“You told me you didn’t mind.”

“I know,” Niall moved his hands up to Zayn’s cheeks, “because I know you worry, but it’s cold in the dungeons and I was half naked!”

Zayn put his hands on his hips, looking slightly less worried, and more frustrated.

“Niall you’re _always_ half naked in the dungeons!”

“Yeah but Zayn you were _licking_ me!”

The color drained from Zayn’s face.

“Excuse me,” Harry cut in while Louis was scrambling to pick his jaw up off the ground, “but you were _what?!”_

Niall dropped his hands from Zayn’s cheeks to cover his open mouth.

“Oh my god,” he said softly, never breaking eye contact with the boy in front of him, “Zayn, oh my god, it just slipped out.”

Zayn opened his mouth a few times to say something, but nothing came out. He looked a bit like a ghost, like the shock of hearing those words come out of Niall’s mouth knocked his soul right out of his body. Niall grabbed both of Zayn’s hands tightly in his own as a stream of apologies flowed unceasingly from his lips.

“No, really guys,” Harry placed a hand on each of their shoulders to get their attention, “I can tell that that was supposed to be a secret, but since it’s out, I’m _really_ going to need context.”

Niall raised his eyebrows at Zayn, who looked like his world might’ve been falling apart around him. Zayn stared at him for a minute before shaking his head and jutting his chin out in Niall’s direction.

 “Alright,” Niall said, obviously much more collected than Zayn, “that’s how he energized the sigils.” He didn’t even look at Harry or Louis while talking to them. His eyes stayed constantly searching Zayn’s face. Occasionally, he would squint his eyes a bit, or tilt his head to the side just a fraction. These tiny gestures seemed to have a clear meaning to Zayn, as he would reply with little nods and stressed looks.

“Wait, hold on, no no no,” Louis babbled quickly. His brain seemed to be short circuiting as it tried to process this information. He stepped behind Niall and hiked his sweater up under his armpits. “You’re telling me that you traced your kinky little tongue along _this_ sigil?!” He smacked his open palm onto Niall’s chest, as if it wasn’t obvious which one he was talking about. “ _This_ one, right here?” he jabbed his finger repeatedly into Niall’s sternum. “ _This_ sigil that almost touches _both_ of Niall’s _nipples?!”_ he reached over and tweaked one of them for emphasis, at which point Niall finally elbowed him solidly in the side, shoving Louis away.

Louis stood back a bit, opposite from Harry. He pointed a finger at both Niall and Zayn, gaze bouncing back and forth between them, taking in Zayn’s deep blush and Niall’s intensely apologetic expression. “You two…” he breathed, “You’re _shagging!_ That’s it, isn’t it?!”

Zayn found his voice again.

“We’re _not_ -” he started, but a sharp look from Niall cut him off.

“Zayn, you need your wand to apparate; now is _not_ the time to start lying.”

Louis wasn’t sure what he meant by that.

Zayn sighed heavily before rubbing at his eyes, knocking his gold and black rimmed glasses askew.

“We’re not… w-we’re not…” he stuttered, “we’re not… _just_ fucking.” Niall’s eyebrows few up in surprise, obviously not expecting that answer. “I don’t want them to think it’s like that.” Zayn explained softly. “We’re… we’re together, like, properly. Told the folks and everything.” He chewed on his lip a bit before finally looking up at Harry first, then at Louis, trying to judge their expressions.

Louis could do nothing but stare for a few beats before he threw his hands out to the sides, a wide grin breaking on his face.

“You’re together.” He sounded slightly breathless, “You’re _together!_ Congratulations!!” Louis threw himself at his friends, encircling them both in a tight hug that Harry readily joined in on. After a minute of much hugging, jumping, and hair ruffling, Louis pulled back from his friends. Niall and Zayn both wore giddy grins, the brightness of which could give the sun a run for its money.

Louis placed his hands on Niall’s cheeks, reigning in his attention.

“Niall, tell me honestly now, is he good to you?”

Niall chuckled, and a faint blush rose to his cheeks. He nodded, looking at Zayn adoringly.

“Yeah, he is.”

Zayn rubbed at his nose and dropped his gaze to the ground, trying to hide a smile.

“That’s good,” Louis said, “otherwise I would need to beat him up. And now the most important question: is he generous in bed?”

Niall said without missing a beat, “Oh, like you wouldn’t believe!”

Harry clapped Zayn on the back, congratulating for his coital achievements.

“Oh gods,” Zayn groaned, once again hiding his face behind his hands, “Louis, didn’t you say a minute ago that we shouldn’t dawdle here? I think I agree with you, suddenly.” He reached around Niall and fished the potion out of his back pocket, uncorking it and handing the vial back to Niall. “Just a drop,” he instructed, “you’re lucky and overconfident as it is, this is really just for my peace of mind.”

Niall tipped the vial back just enough for a drop of the molten gold to splash onto his tongue.

“Fuck, that’s good.” He muttered, passing the potion back to Zayn who pushed the cork in firmly.

After only a breath, the potion started taking effect on Niall. He was nodding and grinning, pleased with the mood and energy boost. He bounced back and forth on his feet, shaking his body and stretching a bit to loosen up his muscles.

“You know what you’re aiming for, right? You know which knot it is?” Louis asked. He didn’t want Niall to get all the way to the trunk of the tree only to realize he didn’t know where to touch it.

“Yeah,” Niall said, bouncing enthusiastically, “I feel like I could do this with my eyes closed.”

“Don’t you dare!” Zayn groaned. He turned and pressed his face into Harry’s shoulder, saying that he couldn’t watch.

“I’ll tell you when it’s over.” Harry said, wrapping his arms loosely around Zayn’s shoulders. Louis stepped in close to them and rubbed slow circles into Zayn’s back, trying to help calm him down. He shooed Niall away with his other hand, silently telling him to get on with it.

Niall moved so he was just out of reach of the tree, bouncing lightly from foot to foot. He had his wand out in his hand, and he was muttering shielding spells under his breath, making sure they were fresh in his mind. When he decided the moment was right, he darted in.

It was really a sight to behold as Niall dipped and dodged away from the branches swinging at him, some almost as large around as his torso. He stayed light on his feet, and he never stopped moving. A few times he got nearly close enough to touch the knot before he had to dive away from a limb swinging angerly at him. Harry and Louis gasped and tensed up at a few close calls, one in particular causing Niall to double over backwards, narrowly avoiding a lethal blow to his upper chest. They tried to keep their reactions to a minimum, however, to avoid sending Zayn into a panic attack.

As he danced lightly around the tree, Louis could see a dripping red line on his forehead where one of the smaller twigs must’ve just barely caught him. He closed in on the knot one last time, hopping onto his toes in a Michael Jackson-esque move to avoid being hit behind the knees, and then dramatically fell forwards as a branch as thick as a baseball bat swung towards his head with deathly speed.

As he dropped to the ground, he stuck a hand out in front of him, landing it flat on the knot.

The tree froze where it was, with a thick limb about a meter away from crushing Niall’s knees.

Niall pumped a victorious fist in the air, and Harry and Louis both let out relieved sighs.

Harry squeezed Zayn’s shoulders. “It’s done,” he said, “your boyfriend’s still alive.”

Zayn peeled himself away from Harry immediately and rushed over to where Niall was leaning back against the trunk. He dropped to his knees and pulled Niall into a tight embrace.

“Come on, lovebirds,” Louis said, positioning himself to slip into the tunnel entrance, “we’ve only got a few minutes before the tree unfreezes. It’s time for this impressive bout of rule breaking to officially begin.”

With Harry close behind, he slid himself feet first down the dark, earthy slope.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for anyone that was waiting on this! id hit a bad patch of writers block for a while, but now that school has started again and I have actual things I should be doing, I'm back at it. sometimes having other responsibilities to procrastinate is the best cure for writers block, am i right?


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang takes a trip to Diagon Alley, and we delve deeper into Zayn's personal life, which he would love to stop talking about.

“Niall and Zayn, shacking up. Can you believe it?” Louis said to Harry as they shuffled single file through the dirt tunnel, “who would’ve thought two wankers like them would end up all doe eyed for each other?”

“Right?” Harry chuckled, “I mean, I knew something was up with them, obviously, but all my guesses were, like, way off. Watch that rock, Ni”

Louis paused for a moment to shoot Harry a curious look over his shoulder. Harry stopped suddenly and Niall, watching the rock, bumped into him with a soft _“oof.”_

“What do you mean you knew something was up with them?”

“Could you stop talking about us like we aren’t literally right behind you?” Zayn asked, and Louis felt like he could actually hear the eye roll in his voice. That didn’t mean he payed any attention to the request, however.

Harry nudged Louis to get him moving again.

“What, you didn’t notice anything weird between them?”

“No,” Louis huffed, a bit defensively.

“That figures,” Zayn muttered, but Louis continued to ignore him.

“What we’re they doing, then?” he questioned Harry.

“They wouldn’t even touch each other at the beginning of the school year, Lou. How did you not notice that? We’ve all been getting at least a half dozen cheek kisses a week from Niall since second year and all of a sudden he couldn’t even look at Zayn without blushing. And Zayn completely stopped making dirty jokes at Niall’s expense. I thought they’d gotten into some kind of fight that they didn’t want to tell us about or something.”

“What? How did I miss all that?” Louis mumbled under his breath, to himself more than anyone else, “I’m usually good at reading people.”

Zayn snorted, and Niall didn’t even attempt to hide a bubble of laughter.

“What?!” Louis squeaked, almost tripping on a root protruding from the dirt “I’m good at picking up on people’s feelings, aren’t I Harry?”

“Have you ever thought about the fact that nobody reads the Wizard Skittles rules unless there’s an argument? Does anyone else ever think about that?”

“Harry,” Louis pointed a finger at him, “first of all, I know what you’re doing, and second of all, stop it.”

Harry sighed, “Look, I just don’t see why you’re asking _me._ We all know you, why is it my opinion that matters?”

Zayn laughed, “Oh, Harry, I think _you_ know why your opinion matters, and I think we’d all _love_ to hear it.” Louis couldn’t understand why he sounded so smug

Harry told him to shove off.

“No Harry, Zayn’s right.” Louis stepped forward so he was face to face with his nervous-looking friend. “Tell me what you think, I can handle it. I’m not a _child_ you know.”

Harry sighed. “Well, alright, but you can’t get upset with me, okay?” Louis nodded in agreement. “Alright. Honestly, Louis? I don’t even think you can read your _own_ emotions half the time, much less anyone else’s. Just last week you told me that you hated Legally Blonde. You _love_ that movie and everyone knows it because you _always_ talk about it!”

Louis felt a bit blindsided. Indignant half-sentences kept slipping past his lips. Lots of “that, that’s just… you don’t… I-I mean…”

Harry raised his eyebrows and tilted his head to the side just a bit.

“You’re upset.” He said, matter-of-factly.

Louis turned around, grumbling, and continued down the dark passageway, holding his glowing wand low to watch for tripping hazards.

“Well, you didn’t have to bring Legally Blonde into it.”

*

After many more minutes of hunched walking and one spectacular pants-ripping stumble from Zayn (“how come none of you warned me about that root?” “we aren’t your seeing-eye-dogs, Zayn”), the four boys finally emerged, stiff-necked, into the dingy old abandoned house.

“Oh, god,” Harry’s eyebrows were raised as he took in the state of the room, full of dust and claw marks, “d’ you think Mr. Potter was right about this place not being haunted? This looks like the exact kind of place that a ghoul would want to live in…maybe a heliopath or something…”

“Well,” Louis bent over and coughed hard, breathing in the dusty air. “jesus-fuck, we’re only here to apparate out anyways. You two know where you’re going?”

“Leaky Cauldron, right?” Harry looked at Zayn to confirm. A few years before, Niall had snuck the five of them into a room in the inn that was left indefinitely empty due to a particularly nasty boggart that nobody had been able to get rid of. They’d only been in the room for a few minutes before a rustling under one of the beds frightened them off, but Harry and Zayn both said they remembered it well enough to confidently get everyone there.

Louis had never learned to apparate as he was petrified of being splinched, but he trusted Harry far more than he trusted himself.

Louis gently took hold of the hand Harry offered him, watching Niall and Zayn lace their fingers together with a twinge of unexpected jealousy. He wondered why Harry hadn’t intertwined their fingers like that, but that thought was quickly swept from his mind as he felt himself being magically yanked forwards by the navel.

*

Louis gripped onto the footboard of one of the beds for support as he clenched his jaw shut and concentrated hard on not throwing up.

“We all here?” he choked out, definitely not about to throw up, “all intact?”

He heard three distinct groans as the rest of the boys struggled to regain their bearings.

“Think I might’ve left some hair behind,” Zayn frowned into a dusty mirror, holding sections of hair straight up to assess the length.

Niall took a deep, calming breath.

“Ok,” he said, “we shouldn’t hang around in here. I _really_ don’t want to see what that boggart’s got to show me.”

Harry nodded immediately. “Niall’s absolutely right. The pub will be a better place to calm down anyways, butterbeers are on me.”

Nobody could argue with that.

*

Louis took a mouthful of his butterbeer, happy for the warm feeling spreading through his veins.

“You have the list, right Niall?”

Niall held up a folded slip of paper.

“I’ve got the list, the money, the candies from the Weasley’s store, _and_ the liquid luck. If anything, I feel _too_ prepared. It’s taking some of the fun out of it.”

Zayn rolled his eyes, “You can whine about that _after_ you pull this off, without getting us all expelled,” he said.

“There should be more than enough money in that bag,” Harry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “just leave the whole thing somewhere in the shop. Don’t worry about figuring out the actual total or anything, alright? The goal is for you to be in and out as fast as possible.”

Louis shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re making him pay for it in the first place.”

Harry frowned, “This apothecary is family owned, Lou. We’re stealing because of the age restrictions, not because we can’t pay.”

“Oh, here, one last thing,” Zayn handed Niall a tiny velvet pouch that Liam had apparently put an expansion charm on. “That’ll fit everything, and it’s small enough to put in your pocket on the way out.”

Niall held up a small candy wrapped in wax-paper. “Is it time, then?” he asked.

“I think so,” Louis said. “We’ll loiter by the broom shop across the street. We want to be out of here as soon as possible, okay?”

Niall nodded, popping the candy into his mouth. It apparently tasted faintly of grass.

After a few moments of nothing, Louis suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to look anywhere but at Niall. He tried for a moment to fight it, mainly just to see if he could, but it felt like he was staring straight into the sun. He looked instead across the bustling pub.

“That’s definitely working, Niall.” Zayn said, staring at the wall across from him. “You should get going. It said that they only last about 15 minutes, but you’ve got another one just in case.”

“Won’t need it,” He said as he sprung up out of his seat. “I bet I’ll be out in five.”

Not a single person looked his way as he strode out of the bar.

*

“D’you think they’d let me buy the floor model for cheaper? Since it’s got dust all in the twigs and everything?”

“I dunno…probably not? Sounds like a liability or something-”

“-Ah! Fuck, I feel like I was just blinded, that must be Niall!”

A voice came up behind them.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go let’s go-”

“I still can’t look at you Ni, where are we going?! Here, grab my hand!”

“The shop keeper knew something was up, were apparating right now, don’t care who sees, the shack, let’s go!”

“Lou, take my hand!”

_CRACK!_

*

Louis immediately bent over and vomited.

“Christ Lou, every time.” Zayn waved his wand and vanished the mess Louis made.

Louis made a rude gesture in lieu of a response.

“Wait,” Niall said, “where do vanished things go?”

Harry made an unpleasant face. “Jesus Niall, is now really the time?”

“Can we just go?” Louis opened his mouth as little as possible, in fear of a repeat.

“Yeah, lets get out of here.”

*

Harry led the way out of the tunnel. Louis was much too shaken up to watch for tripping hazards, and they wanted to get out and back in the castle as soon as possible. He tapped on the knot at the tunnel opening, and they scurried back to the castle as quickly as they could without looking too suspicious.

They were greeted by a lovely stream of warm air as Zayn pushed open the castle door. Louis swore he could feel his body coming back to life as they stepped over the threshold. He always thought the castle was a bit blustery and chilly, but compared to the miserable conditions outside, it currently felt immensely cozy.

Louis closed his eyes to really, fully appreciate the warmth. He felt himself being swaddled in it, and a tremble ran down his spine. It was the exact opposite feeling of walking through a ghost. He allowed himself to get so distracted that he didn’t notice the sounds of someone approaching.

His good feelings vanished immediately as someone cleared their throat directly behind them.

“Hello, boys.”

Four heads snapped up. Louis was only slightly comforted by the fact that he was not greeted by the face of Headmistress McGonagall. His eyes landed instead on a much less intimidating professor, clad in dark trousers and a thick-knit teal sweater.

“Oh, hello Professor Longbottom,” Harry said, somehow sounding perfectly normal, “going out for a stroll around the grounds?”

Their professor raised his eyebrows, looking somewhat amused.

“No, Harry, I’m not ‘going out for a stroll around the grounds,’ on account of the fact that it’s absolutely miserable outside.”

Professor Longbottom stared at them silently then, his eyes hopping from face to uncomfortable face. The boys said nothing.

“Well,” he said eventually, “you four would know that better than me, wouldn’t you? Seeing as you’re all…soggy.”

Louis honestly couldn’t tell whether or not they were about to get in trouble. He’d only ever seen Longbottom take a handful of points away from a student, and even that was a rare occurrence. He couldn’t picture him doing anything much harsher.

On the other hand, he _was_ a professor, and if he had any inkling of the fact that the four of them had left school grounds (going all the way to London, no less), or of the amount of stolen goods they had on them at that very moment… Well, Louis still couldn’t picture Longbottom so much as raising his voice at them, but he would surely escort them straight to the headmistress’s office, and that strict old witch would come down on them like the hand of God.

“So, what _were_ you all up to outside, in this horrible weather?”

Louis’s throat was dry.

“Well…we…”

“I was trying out a new broom wax!” Niall blurted out, “Yeah, yeah it’s supposed to work better in cold weather, not get so…gummy…”

Professor Longbottom raised an eyebrow, gaze drifting over all their faces.

“Does it usually take four guys to test a broom wax?”

“Well, yeah.” Zayn said. Louis could practically see the gears turning in his head. “Because it’s a _wax_ , which is…um…slippery. So we were there to catch him if he fell?”

“That’s _very_ nice of you.” He didn’t look like he believed them at all. “Well that’s great, because I’ve been in the market for a good cold-weather broom wax. What was yours called?”

Niall’s eyebrows popped up his forehead. “It was…um…”

“There you lot are!” they all jumped a bit as they heard Liam’s voice call from behind them. “I’ve been looking all over for you! McGonagall wants to see us all right away, something about charmed firecrackers in Filch’s office? She said they wont stop exploding, we shouldn’t keep her waiting. So sorry to interrupt you, Professor Longbottom!”

Their teacher chuckled a bit under his breath. “No, that sounds like a very pressing issue. We can talk broom wax later, hm? Good luck with Filch, boys.”

The five of them turned and made a b line for the stairs.

“ _I_ didn’t charm any fireworks,” Louis said frantically, “Niall, did you?!”

“There are no fireworks, Lou!” Liam hissed as they crested the stairs.

Louis turned to Liam, shocked, as he slumped back against the brick wall behind him.

“You _lied?”_ He breathed, dramatically. “Oh Gods, my whole world is upside down!”

“I can _not_ believe you just lied to a teacher, Liam.” Harry laughed. He seemed to be taking it much better than Louis.

“I know, I know! Look what you’re turning me into!” Despite Liam’s words, a pink hue graced the tops of his smiling cheeks. He looked delighted with himself. Louis wondered if he was indeed proud of his lie, or if he was simply proud to have saved them from a sticky situation. He was a Gryffindor, after all. Gryffindors love saving the day.

Feeling the stress and anxiety of the past few hours begin to lift, the other boys joined in, laughing along with them.

*

All five boys sat huddled in blankets around the fire in the Gryffindor common room.

“So everything went to plan then? Nobody’s getting expelled?” Liam passed around steaming mugs of hot chocolate that he’d prepared for all of them. Louis hovered his nose over his and inhaled deeply, letting his lungs fill with warm chocolate air. Niall passed his back to Liam, asking for whipped cream.

“Well,” Zayn sighed, “nobody’s expelled yet, but Niall thought that the shopkeeper was onto him. We’ll have to keep an eye on the paper for a little while, and we should probably try to keep out of trouble.” He took a sip of his hot chocolate, pausing for a minute before pulling a small metal flask out of his robes. He poured a small amount of amber liquid into his coco before passing the bottle to Niall, who did the same.

Niall held up the bottle, asking if anyone else wanted any.

“It’s whiskey,” he said, “the good stuff.”

Louis sprung forwards, snatching it from Niall’s hand a moment before Harry got to it, and sticking his tongue out with a snicker.

Harry shook his head and looked across their small circle at Zayn.

“Seekers,” he said, “always showing off.”

“Don’t I know it.” Zayn smiled, nudging Niall in the ribs.

Louis’s head snapped up as he passed the flask on to Harry.

“Oh, _shit!”_ four startled sets of eyes landed on Louis, “Liam wasn’t there earlier! He doesn’t know about you two!”

Liam grinned, looking back and forth between Niall and Zayn.

“They finally found out, then?” he asked.

Hogwarts’ hottest new couple just laughed, but this time even Harry was shocked.

“You _knew? Liam_ knew? God, Zayn, I can’t believe you told Liam but you didn’t tell me! If this coco weren’t so hot I would throw it at you and just completely mess up your hair. That’s a lie, I wouldn’t do that, but I _am_ upset.”

Louis patted Harry on the knee. “Doesn’t feel so good to be the one that’s left out now, does it?”

“I never even wanted to say that stuff in the tunnel, _you_ made me!”

“I wouldn’t have made you if Zayn hadn’t been being so weird about it!”

“Ah, and just like that,” Harry said, very seriously, “it all comes back to Zayn, doesn’t it?”

Zayn rubbed his hands over his face with a groaned ‘oh my god’ as Liam and Niall laughed.

“Look,” Zayn said, “I didn’t even really _tell_ Liam. Liam sort of…told me?”

Louis snorted, “What, did Niall have Liam pass you the note like first years?”

“ _I_ didn’t even know at that point.” Niall said, “Liam knew before either of us.”

Harry and Louis exchanged a quizzical look.

“Okay. What?”

Zayn took a drink of his coco and wiped his mouth. “Okay. Well. I wasn’t _planning_ to tell this story today but if you absolutely must know, fine. So, last Christmas, I’m sure you’ll remember, Niall came home with me for Christmas.”

“Me family was in South Africa.”

“Right, we remember, keep going.”

“Well, nothing happened, but we had a really, really good time, right? We had a good time. But after we got back to school, I… I sort of felt like my wand wasn’t working right? And still nothing was happening with me and Niall, but my wand seemed like it was getting worse. And then one day we were in potions together and Niall wouldn’t stop making dumb faces whenever Slughorn’s back was turned, and after we left class that day my wand just…wouldn’t work. There would be like a spark or a little tiny bit of smoke whenever I tried to use it but that was it. So, naturally, I went to Liam, the wand guy, and he told me…well…Liam?”

“I told Zayn that his wand is black walnut, and that black walnut wands don’t work for a person that isn’t being honest with themself. His wand was working just fine for me. So I asked what he was lying to himself about, and, you know Zayn, he said ‘I don’t know, shut up’. And, well, I’d had a hunch that Zayn had feelings for Niall ever since that Ravenclaw beater knocked Niall off his broom that one time. Remember? Me and Harry had to physically hold him back so he wouldn’t run onto the pitch and murder that poor girl. So I asked him how he felt about Niall, and he said that he didn’t feel anything about Niall, so I wished him good luck without his wand, and then he hit me, and then I told him that the problem really, really wasn’t going to go away unless he was honest with himself, and then he…left.

“Wait, what?” Harry asked. He looked enamored with the story.

“Yeah, he just snatched his wand and stomped away. And we sat by each other in charms the next day and his wand was working perfectly fine.”

“Tell them what happened the week after!” Niall said, poking Zayn in the side.

Zayn groaned, “Oh Gods, please don’t.”

“Come on, it’s sweet!” Niall insisted, “Liam, tell them.”

“Well, about a week later, Zayn sat down next to me in the library and said ‘Liam, I think I really like Niall, and I want to ask him on a date, but I’m afraid he’ll think it’s weird.’”

Louis was delighted, shouting “Oh my god, our Zayney really does have a heart!”

Liam laughed as Zayn’s blush deepened.

“But…yeah,” Liam said, “that’s pretty much it. That’s how I basically told Zayn that he had feelings for Niall.”

Niall leaned over to plant a kiss on Zayn’s cheek.

“Thank god somebody told him,” he laughed, “otherwise I would’ve had to ask him out meself, and we all know Niall Horan doesn’t make the first move.”

“My life would be so much easier if that weren’t true,” Zayn said, returning the kiss.

Louis eyed Zayn’s wand curiously, wondering who else it would withhold it's power from

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long wait, but hey! im not dead! also, if you would love for me to be writing more, which i would also love, comments are so fucking motivational! when people tell me that they like my story it makes me want to write more! a very nice comment is the only reason this chapter got finished! so all im saying is if you like this story and you want me to keep writing it, please tell me that. anyways. i hope you enjoy!


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